Movie Trailer Review

Movie Trailer Review
Hailey Hurowitz
October 2nd, 2012

Title of Film: Little Miss Sunshine
Release Date: July 26, 2006
Producer: Albert Berger, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Marc Turtletaub, and Ron Yerxa
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Genre: Indie

Plot: Sheryl Hoover is an overworked mother of two children who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Her brother Frank is a gay scholar of French author Marcel Proust, and is temporarily living at home with the family after a suicide attempt.  Sheryl's husband, Richard is trying to build a career as a motivational speaker and a life coach.  Dwayne, Sheryl's son from a previous marriage, is an unhappy teenager who has taken a vow of silence until he can accomplish his dream of getting into the US Air Force Academy in order to become a test pilot.  Richard's father, Edwin, a World War II veteran recently evicted from a retirement home for using heroin, lives with the family now.  He is close with his seven-year-old granddaughter, Olive.  When Olive learns she was qualified for the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty contest that is being held in Redondo Beach, California in two days, she is really excited.  However, money is tight, the only way to make the trip is if the entire household goes.  Despite Richard, Dwayne, and Frank not wanting to go, they all get together to support Olive and go on the 800 mile road trip in their yellow Volkswagen.  They family argues a lot during the trip, with all the yellow van's car troubles.  When the van's clutch breaks early in the trip, the family finds out that they must push the van until it reaches 20 miles per hour, and then run and jump in.  Later, the horn starts honking uncontrollably, resulting with the family getting pulled over.  Throughout the road trip, the family suffers a lot of personal setbacks, and discover their need for each other's support.  Richard loses an important contract that would have jump-started his motivational business and saved the family from financial problems.  Frank see's his ex-boyfriend who, in leaving him for Frank's chief academic rival, made his suicide attempt.  Meanwhile, Edwin dies from a heroin overdose.  In order to reach the beauty contest in time, the family puts his body out of the hospital, transporting it around with them, planning to make funeral arrangements after the pageant.  During the last part of the trip, Dwayne finds out he is color blind, and therefore he can never get a pilot's license, which makes him break his silence, making him refuse to continue with the trip and revealing his anger and anger towards his family.  He storms from the van in tears, but is calmed down by a hug from Olive and returns to the family, apologizing for the things he yelled.  They made it to the beauty contest with barley no time to spare, and Olive is almost refused entrance to the pageant for arriving at the hotel four minutes late.  As she gets ready, the family looks at the other competitors that look like they have been doing this for a long time.  It quickly becomes apparent that Olive that is plain, pale, slightly chubby, with ugly hair, wearing large eyeglasses, and untrained in beauty pageant conventions is not in their league.  When it is almost time for Olive to perform in the talent portion of the pageant, Richard and Dwayne see that Olive is certain to be humiliated, they run to the dressing room to prevent her from performing.  Sheryl, however, says that they should just let Olive be Olive, and Olive will decide to go on stage or not.  Olive performs the dance routine that her Grandpa had secretly choreographed for her, a burlesque performance to Rick James song "Super Freak," Olive, not knowing this routine and song is a little too old for her, they audience is horrified.  They organizers are shocked, and demand Sheryl and Richard remove Olive from the stage.  Instead of that, one by one the members of the family join Olive on stage, dancing alongside her, and Richard prevents the pageant officials from touching his daughter.  They family is next seen outside the hotel's security office where a police officer tells them they are free to leave as long as Olive never again enters a beauty pageant in the state of California.  Richard tells Olive that her grandfather would of been very proud of her, and the family happily piles into the junky bus and heads back to their home in Albuquerque.

Time and Place of Film: The film takes place in the United States in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The time of the film takes place in 2006.

Main Characters: Toni Collette plays Sheryl Hoover, Olive and Dwayne's mother.  Steve Carell plays Frank Ginsberg, Sheryl's gay brother.  Greg Kinnear plays Richard Hoover, Toni Collette's husband.  Paul Dano plays Dwayne Hoover, the brother of Olive who wants to be a test pilot.  Abigail Breslin, plays Olive, the girl that performs in a beauty pageant.  Alan Arkin plays Edwin Hoover, the grandpa that is addicted to heroin.

Introduction and Ending: 
              I think the introduction of the movie trailer was okay, it was nothing special.  The introduction starts off as the family sitting at the table, and the grandpa points out that Dwayne is not talking.  The family gets a call that some girl quit the pageant, so their is a spot for Olive to be in it, which she is really excited about.  The family then heads to California, and immediately they start arguing about random stuff.  Their yellow bus thing then breaks down, and they all get out and start to push it, and then they get back on their way to the beauty pageant.
              I think the ending of the movie trailer was just okay too.  It first starts out how the honking of the horn can't stop on the yellow van thing, and they get pulled over by a cop because of that.  After that they show really quickly, and shot little shots of most of everything that happens in the car ride on the way to the beauty contest.  After that part it shows Olive sitting in a bed asking her grandpa if he thought she was pretty, and of course he says yes.  At the very end they are all in the car and they all realize that Olive isn't in the car, so they go back to get her, but they can't stop the car to get her because the car won't stop, so she has to jump in, quickly.
            The introduction and ending really should you what the movie was going to be about in little pieces, but it still didn't ruin the movie.  It really made you want to go see it because it seems like an hilarious movie.  The introduction and ending though wasn't very cool looking, and it had a lot of writing on it about the movies, and the awards and stuff it won.  Towards the end it also ran through the main characters that were in the movie.
     
Camera Work: The camera work wasn't really fancy because after all it is an independent film, but just because it didn't have great camera work, it still was a good trailer. The camera was not shaky, and it even had a few basic transitions that I saw.  Before I watched the trailer I new it wasn't going to be like a Stephen Spielberg trailer because it is an indie film after all.  It was good enough. 

Identifying Shots and Angles: There was a lot of medium shots and a few close ups.  There wasn't much of any others shots or angle shots, which they could of included to make the trailer better.  The trailer was still good though without all the fancy shots.

Key Moment: A key moment of the movie trailer was when Olive was laying on a bed, sort of looking said and asked her grandfather if he thought she was truly pretty.  The grandpa responded saying that he thought she was the prettiest person in the whole world, and Olive said he was just saying that.  The grandpa responded to that saying he was madly in love with her and its not just because of her brains or personality....:)  It was a very cute and funny moment.

Who Would Like This Film: I think this would be a family film, but it would be for families that had mature family members in them because this movie does have some things in it that people need maturity to watch.  I would rate this movie PG-13 just because it has some stuff that isn't meant for little kids to see.  It is a great film for people that love comedy, if you don't, you might not like this movie.

Rate This Film: I rate this movie 5 stars because it is a great independent film that is really funny.  I love funny movies, and I loves family comedies like this.  It reminds me of the funny movie vacation, but this a cleaner version.  This characters played their parts very well, which is always great to see in a movie.

Recommendations: I would recommend this movie to kids 13 and up because it has some things in it that young kids shouldn't see.  I think this movie would be okay for younger kids of the ages of 10, 11, and 12 to see if they are watching it with their parents.  If you don't like funny movies, you shouldn't watch this movie.