My Last Blog Post

What is it with old people trying to pass on their wisdom before they die?

Little Miss Sunshine, the Academy Award winning box office success that was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and written by Michael Arndt, is the tragic and comedic depiction of one dysfunctional family’s many failures and the lessons learned along the journey. The film alternates between intense orchestral music and comedy in order to both accentuate and distract from the series of personal setbacks which the Hoovers, like many families across the nation, must endure.

I’m not considered by many to be a fun guy, so it really helps when movie characters bearing my name snort heroin. I initially thought the white powder that the old man was snorting off a mirror was cocaine, but it turns out that not only was the drug heroin, but snorting heroin is actually a lot safer than injecting it. So, props to my man, Edwin, for looking out for his health.

Anyway, as I said earlier the Hoovers are a very dysfunctional family. Dysfunction, as it turns out, can be caused by many things including addiction, codependency, and untreated mental illness. The Hoover family’s dysfunction is arguably caused by a number of things, but ranking in at number one seems to be a commitment to the ideals of individualism and a rejection of help from others (or so I’ve read on the internet). Symbolic of the characters’ increasing willingness to work together and the increasing efficiency with which they do it is the starting of their old broken down car. This action, which is one of the film’s motifs, requires all of the family members to work together and help each other in order for anyone to go anywhere.

The film goes further, pointing out that individually each member of the Hoover family is essentially, as Dwayne put it, a loser. Throughout the film Richard loses a business deal, Frank runs into his rival who caused him to try to kill himself, Dwayne learns he will never be able to fulfill his dream, and Olive is ejected from a beauty pageant. The moral is that by themselves they are a sad bunch of losers, but together (as they are on the pageant stage dancing) they can be happy and their struggles will, by way, become insignificant.

While it is not normal for a family to drive cross-country with a dead body stuffed in their trunk (I’ve only had to do it two or three times), the pressure to be a winner and not a loser is something that is. You might even call it a norm.

Oh, what's that? I'm running out out of time? Oh, I've already ran out of time because I have just been watching YouTube? And I didn't tell the viewers that they can watch the film here? Ok, but now I did? Alright, thanks.