Speaker 1: We're terrible, Lorenzo, and this is the Bitter Kitten Movie Club.
Hello Kitten's welcome back to another edition of the b
k MC, A supplemental edition of the PSO where we
take a look at one film and give all our
thoughts on it. I think that is the smoothest I
know b k M c intro I have ever done.
Speaker 2: Like your hair right now?
Speaker 3: Your hair?
Speaker 2: Your hair.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a little weird.
Speaker 1: Anyway, this week's film is Little Miss Sunshine, and we
before we flipped on the mics, I said to Lorenzo,
I was like, I think this might be the shortest
one we've ever done, the shortest b k MC podcast
we've ever done. I picked this film for the lineup
for this month. You know, we try and mix it
up a little bit. Genres, styles, eras, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to.
Speaker 1: Really get into anything older than the nineteen eighties on
this in this project for now at least, because it's
very difficult to get people to watch old old films
any and I don't want to going for a more
popular right.
Speaker 2: We don't want to fall into the same cliche of
like old movies, classicals and stuff. Like that, at least
not for now.
Speaker 1: I never forgot a bitchy queen who was a friend
of mine but it's no longer who said when our
blog first launched. He was like, it's nice, but it's
all like the obsessions of middle aged gay men.
Speaker 2: And I was like, fuck that queen said that. You
know who I'm talking about, right, but New York queen
that we don't talk about any well, of course, of
course the New York queen, but anyway, that's another subject.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the reason I picked this this film is again,
you know, I wanted to a range of styles and everything,
but also I had seen this film once, probably around
the time it came out. It came out in two
thousand and six, and I really really didn't like it.
And it was critically acclaimed.
Speaker 3: I mean it was.
Speaker 1: It was nominated for Best Picture, it won Alan Arkin
won Best Supporting Actor for his performance in it, and
that was a deserved win.
Speaker 2: But the thing is that I respect critics, I mean,
believe me, I do. That's what they do, their professionists,
But sometimes they get too much.
Speaker 1: Well in love with some especially around this time when
it came to indie films, and this was kind of
what set me off back then. It just if I
I and Okay, I look at it. I looked at
it in two thousand and six, I looked at it
in twenty twenty six, and I had largely the same reaction,
which was, this feels like a checklist of indie film markers.
Like you have adorably quirky little girl, you have the
teenager who does not speak that's sort of god, teenager
who doesn't speak their grandfather, the grandfather who's inappropriate. Everything
about it felt checked off a list and felt like
something I had seen before.
Speaker 2: Everything the fat having trouble with its job, you know,
it's like everything it.
Speaker 3: Just you know what.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too deep into the weeds
of my critiques yet, I want to talk about first
what I liked about the film, because this is what
I'm trying to get at is I picked the film
to see if I could reassess it two decades later,
like maybe I was wrong about it, Maybe I you know,
et cetera, et cetera. So and I admit that a
lot of the stuff that I didn't like about the
film immediately popped up in the first twenty minutes, and
I was like, shit, it's exactly what I remembered it as.
But I have to say I will unpack a few
things about the story as it goes along, But when
it gets to the end, I was like, all right,
this is worthy. This was worth my time. It was
worth it spending it with these people.
Speaker 3: The cast is just the castle.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, that cast is stacked and nobody
gives a bad performance. I do think Steve Carrell's Sad
Gay is a bit of a It was a cliche
top to bottom.
Speaker 2: It was a weird take.
Speaker 1: It was a weird take, but honestly, he was an
up and coming comic actor at that time. Okay, see
what it was a little and in two thousand and
six it was still kind of a big deal when
a straight actor played gay, So it was kind of
a brave creative choice for him to make to play
that character. I just didn't think he added any I mean,
but it's really well acted. Everybody's great in it.
Speaker 3: I actually.
Speaker 1: It made me go to IMDb and check out Greg
kinnear because I was like, what happened to him? He
doesn't seem to you know, but he actually has been working.
I just haven't been paying attention to what he's been.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I like about watching these movies is
that you forget about these people were there.
Speaker 1: She was in everything, Yeah, for like fifteen years there.
I mean he, like I said, he's still working. He
he was in Marco's Got Money's Troubles.
Speaker 2: Or they're so young, you know, Like I'm like, oh
my god, they're so young. Yeah, like what's his name,
Poet Pole? You know, my god, he's a child.
Speaker 1: Well he's I mean I looked it up. He was
like in his twenties, but he was playing a fifteen
year you look like a.
Speaker 2: Fifty look like a teenager. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Abigail Breslin adorable, and Tony Kolett. Man, it just
never goes wrong. If you want a harried mother, she's
your gal. She is the one to play.
Speaker 2: And she does American so well, like America does America
really very well. I love her since day one. Yeah,
she's she's been incredible.
Speaker 1: So uh, I think it's a perfectly enjoyable film.
Speaker 3: I really do.
Speaker 1: I think it's I really don't have I'm not going
to rail against it, but I will talk about what
I didn't like about why it sets me off. Let
me just say before I get into that, I want
to talk about the story itself, which.
Speaker 2: We need to explain that. Yeah, well no, I mean
if you watched it, if you're listening, watch a summary.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not giving a summary.
Speaker 2: Sorry. What I mean is, ah, he's laughing, but he
wants to kill me. I know that laugh mister. No,
I'm not going to sum it up.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole point here is that we're we've
all watched it, and now we're talking about it. My
issue with the script, with the story is that there
are times when I feel like it just didn't feel
very believable. And you know, that's not the most salient
critique in the world, because it doesn't necessarily have to
be a believable film. But for instance, like when you
get to her act at the end, her dance act,
which is I mean, it's a really funny paloff.
Speaker 2: I thought it was some some other member.
Speaker 1: They all danced anyway, right, but I'm talking about her act.
When you get to that, it's a great payoff. It's
really funny. But you have to sit there and think
they went on this entire trip and none of them
knew what she was going to do when she got up.
Speaker 3: There like that. The whole film hinges on that, and
the whole time I'm watching that scene, I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know. Considering the family, I get that
they are completely checked out on a lot of things,
but I don't know that really it hinged on on
something that I first out left it because it caught
me completely off. It is really funny, it is really,
and I give them credit for going into the joke,
but not the joke never goes somewhere uncomfortable, like they
never made Abigail Breslin do something where I was like, Okay,
that's okay, that's al too much.
Speaker 1: It's it's relatively innocent all around. It's just you know, inappropriate.
Speaker 2: That's song. It's a song.
Speaker 1: She's slapping her ass while she's dancing and everything. I mean,
it's really, really funny, and it's a shame because it's
the funniest part of the film and it's the most
memorable part of the film.
Speaker 3: So I just kept waiting for it.
Speaker 2: But what I love about that scene is the hypocrisy,
you know, the whole hypocritical attitude of the other ones,
because I mean, all these girls look like adults with
all that makeup and hair and everything, and they sexualize
these girls. So to react the way they reacted with
what she did, it's a little too much. I mean
it is. It is a little too much, but coming
from where you guys come from, like dressing these little
girls like like adult.
Speaker 1: So similarly, and again I guess this goes to how
checked out the family is. They know the grandfather's doing Heroin,
I know, so they're like, you're rooming with Grandpa Intel
tonight with the little six year old girl. I'm like,
what it just it helps the story if she has
to go and wake them up the next morning and
say Grandpa won't wake up. Yeah, everything, and sometimes those
things they were really hard against the characters, because yes,
they are checked out. They are not Their marriage isn't great,
their family structure isn't great. They're not emotionally supportive of
each other throughout most of the film. But that's a
level of irresponsibility where you're just getting it and it's
actually it's the same thing with Greg Kinnear's character in
that scene where he berates her for eating ice cream.
I'm like, all right, we're getting into full on. He's
a villain here. Right, And the best way to end
this story is to have her his wife walk out
on him because he is literally abusing his daughter. We're
watching him do that, but.
Speaker 3: It's quirky, and we forgive him.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I do think the film sometimes loses
sight of how people act in real situations because it's
so caught up in it's quirkiness, in its little twists
and turns and everything.
Speaker 2: Guy, I hate when a script has milestones to be reached,
you know, and and they use the characters for it,
you know what I mean, Like instead of developing the
what do you mean by that? Like like when okay,
you write a script and you're like, all right, we
need to do this, We need to make this point,
we need to write, you know, like you establish what
you need to cover.
Speaker 3: And then and then fill in the blank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you sort of like use the characters for it
instead of having the characters being characters, right, you know,
you know what I mean. I mean it's hard to
explain what I'm science say, but instead of having characters
being real people quote unquote real people and have them
act like real people, you create a script that Okay,
well they need to do this. The grandfather needs to
die now, and then she needs to do and then
something's gonna happen with the kid, you know what I mean, like, uh, instead.
Speaker 3: Of thing's gonna happen to make Paul Dano speak.
Speaker 2: Right right, And that was a bit of a I
do like some of the stories I do.
Speaker 1: And like Steve Carrell they're in a gas station when
he runs into his old boy what stuff like that,
where it's like, Okay, I get it. It's a quirky
little tail. It doesn't have to be realistic, but you
are taking me out of it. I think sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was like, how they be there?
Speaker 1: The same coincidence of that is just a little bit
too much for me to take that.
Speaker 2: Stuff like that was a little too much. The whole
cop thing finding the porn and just letting them go
and keeping the porn. Come on, it's again, it's a comedy.
It doesn't have to be realistic. But I think tonally,
sometimes the film doesn't know where it is where you
know where it lands. Are we doing an unrealistic comedy,
like a broad sort of comedy, or are we doing
a quirky indie film about family dynamics? And I think
sometimes it tries to do both and it doesn't work.
And that cop scene is perfect example of that, where
I was like, all right, you're taking out of this.
I mean, if this was some goofy dumb and dumber
style in my film, then fine, that scene works. But
within the context of this one, right, it just I
don't know. I have a loved hate thing with road movies,
like you know, road Trip, I agree with. I love
them in a way, I mean, but they are cliches.
Those are my favorite when it comes to in the
national movies, because first of all, you get to see
those beautiful scenes in landscape and all that, and the
characters sometimes they're rech but its.
Speaker 1: Characters also go on a journey. It feels very cliche.
Speaker 2: But it's the same. Everybody hates everybody to get on a.
Speaker 1: Car, and then by the end they all learned a
pall love each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, let's.
Speaker 1: Take a quick break and we'll come back with some
more critiques. We'll be right back. We're back talking about
Little Miss Sunshine. And when Lorenzo started talking about road
movies and everything, I just said to them with the
MIC's off, I was like, I know, you want to
mention Central Station. Well, there's Central Station is one of Lorenzo's. Well,
we'll have to put them on the list. We are
one of Lorenzo's favorite films. And it is a Brazilian
movie from like nineteen ninety six, I think, And it's.
Speaker 2: A yeah, I think too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a road movie. It's about a woman and
a boy who travel across Brazil. And it's not a comedy, no,
absolutely not. That is an example of how to do
a movie like that correctly and not lapse into cliche
the way I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I urge everyone to watch it. So I'm not gonna
we'll put it on the list for next month. I'm
not gonna give it away how it ends, especially, and
I love that movie because of that. You know, it's
it's it's a journey. That one is a journey.
Speaker 3: It is, and it feels like an epic one.
Speaker 2: Right. So it's a beautiful movie. The scenery and the traveling,
it's just incredible. It's a beautiful story. It's definitely one
of my favorite movies of all time anyway. But so
I do like those movies. There's so many international movies
like that where people get on a car and they travel.
Speaker 1: So many American movies, yeah, and they tend to all
be focused on the American West because you have all
those wide open spaces. So this was Albuquerque in California,
and it was all very much And that's fine, But
like I said it, it feels like a cliche of
indie films around two thousand and six. It feels like
the exact kind of film that critics went crazy for
twenty years ago. Because it checked off all of these boxes.
That doesn't make it a bad film, but I don't
think it's a great film.
Speaker 2: I think it's a perfectly enjoyabah. It's funny because I
rewatch it. It was my second time watching it, and
I have to say Paul Dana's character is my favorite.
Speaker 1: I think he's great, and I do think Steve Correll
is good. I do, and I did like their scenes together,
but I was like, there's something very dated about the sad,
tragic gay figure played by a straight actor. I'm just
not impressed by it anymore. We act too much of
like a zombie to me. You know, well, he's post suicide.
Speaker 2: I get all that, but I didn't get much emotion
from him. But the lines are dead on. I really
like the script, the stuff he says and related to
the family and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do
like that, but he's acting. I don't know, it's just
fell off a little bit.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what my because I haven't
really talked about what pisses me without this film and
what originally pissed me off about this film and it's
and the reason I put it at the back end
of this is because I don't want to over emphasize
this critique. It affected my viewing of the film, but
it is ultimately an easy one for you as a
viewer to dismiss. This is my thing, whether you agree
or not. We should mention that this was directed by
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a couple who have directed
a bunch of music videos and a bunch of other films,
and it was written by Michael Aren't. And I'm bringing
this up because I'm kind of taking those three people
to test.
Speaker 3: Here's an example. Michael Aren't, the screenwriter.
Speaker 1: He said he chose the iconic YELLOWVW bus for them
to drive in and for it to constantly break down
because that was the bus his family. It was like
thirty five year old bus at the time of two
thousand and six. And this is my issue with the
film is that the aesthetic of the film is completely off.
And I said this to you last night, well while
you were watching it, we watched it separately.
Speaker 3: I said that family would not have that. He would
not have that van. He's such a striver and he's
so image obsessed and success obsessed. He would, you know,
mortgage his house to have a fancy car. He would
not have a thirty five year old van like that.
Speaker 2: And especially the van falling apart, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I know they don't have money. I
get that, But this is my issue with the film
is the clichde way they indicate that this family doesn't
have money.
Speaker 2: And it's very clear that they don't have money right now.
But look at the house. I mean, look, well, that's my.
Speaker 3: Problem with the house is.
Speaker 1: And this was my problem back then. I was like,
that's not what poor people look like. I'm sorry that
not in two thousand and six. Let me just say
in two thousand and six, that was about when we
were furnishing our home. I mean, we were ten years
into our relationship at that point, but we were in
that mode where we were decorating and that sort of thing.
And we live in a section of the Philadelphia Old City,
which at the time it had a lot of chic
vintage stores. In fact, the last Sheikh vintage store just
left our neighborhood, oh last year, and we furnished our
place with a lot of stuff from those places. And
when you walked into a vintage store in two thousand
and six, a high end vintage store where everything was
well curated and expensive, it looked like their house. Right,
That's not what the Salvation Army looks like. That's not
what like, That's not what Porpi. That was an extremely
well curated house of vintage mid century Brady Bunch, you
know esthetic, and it absolutely was wrong for our family
in two thousand and six. I think I might have
mentioned this before for some reason. I remember talking about
this on this podcast. It's you know, we've been doing
this a long time. But I once compared the a
set of this film to do you ever see I
know you've seen it the Lord video for Royal Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,
which depicts poverty, modern poverty in the way I talk
about this because I have in my life, in my upbringing.
I have been part of a poor family. I have
been part of a poor working family. I know what
it looks like and it doesn't look like that quirky
art directed house. And I bring up royal because it
shows them living and they don't have anything, like they
just literally don't have anything because they're poor, and poor
people don't have quirky, curated mid century stuff. They have
plastic shit that they bought, you know, or they have
really old, broken down shit. That's what the house of
a poor person looks like, not this curated. And that
bothered me right from the beginning. And honestly, the film
is there's only one scene or maybe two scenes set
in the house and the rest of the film is
set out of the house. But it really turned me
off right And then when I read that about the van,
like that was the van from my child. Well, that's
the problem here. You're you're depicting poor people in nineteen
seventy five and this is two thousand and six, so
it doesn't feel correct to me.
Speaker 2: It goes back to what I said, it's it's just
because you have to do something, so you just throw
these characters, you know, into and it looks good some
sort of situation. Yeah, the fact that, okay, we really
need them all in a van, so they can't afford
ticket airline tickets, you know, like right flight, they can't.
Speaker 1: It be interesting to have them in some nineteen ninety
five you know, Ford aerostar. No, we have to put
them in a quirky thirty five year old gen X
signifier because you know, it looks good on film. That
was my issue with the film, and it remains my
issue with the film is that it is overly quirky.
It has an interesting story, great cast, but the aesthetic
and that the sort of indie quirkiness, it sort of
overwhelmed me.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I mean it gets into a lot of cliches,
but I you kind of enjoyed it every now and then,
you know, the dialogue and the situation. I agree, I
don't want to trust us now. Abigail's adore She is adorable.
I mean her face when you look at her face, yeah,
she conveys all.
Speaker 3: And she's not allous or anything like that.
Speaker 1: No, she's literally everybody and it's good. I don't know
that Alan Orkan deserved an oscar for that performance, but
he's always watchable and they probably handed it to him
because you know, it was a lifetime achievement.
Speaker 2: Thing, right. But she's adorable. I love her. H the
Abigail again, she's just Adora. But when she's on the
van and she's asking, like at the table, when she's
asking all those questions, I mean, it's just it's just nice.
I agree, it's a nice performance.
Speaker 1: And just to go back to my think about the aesthetic,
the reason that sets me off, as I indicated, I
grew up in a family that struggled, you know, a
low income, working class family, and it didn't look like that.
And the other thing I want to say about the
film is that I really don't know the backgrounds of
the people involved, the directors and the screenwriter, but to me,
it felt like this was an image of blowing come
working class people produced by people who don't actually respect
the lives that they're living. I felt that the movie
was sometimes a little cruel in the its assessment of
those people. Here's an example, A really good example is
Roseanne the TV show, where a the house looked like
a poor person's, a poor working class house. It was
shitty furniture and things were broken down. It wasn't this
quirky Brady Bunch House and be that show. I haven't
seen the Connors, but that show back in the day.
It respected that what the struggles of what these people
were going through. It respected the perspective of what it's
like to worry about your bills.
Speaker 2: They weren't making fun of this, They weren't making fun
of them. They were laughing with them exactly.
Speaker 1: And I do feel like this film sometimes is making
fun of it's low income, working class people, and I
it just set it. I was like, I don't like,
there's something very smug about that's the word. There's something
very smug about this film, and that's what I kind
of It's a well made film. If these things don't
bother you, it's worth your time. But for me, it
was like this, I think it's.
Speaker 2: A lovely movie. I actually enjoyed watching again. The only
thing that I don't like is that they make such
a big deal about her winning and how important that
is for everybody, for her, for her grandfather, and they
kind of dropped that conversation towards end and.
Speaker 1: We never see her reaction. I mean, she should have
been a little devastated by how that played out.
Speaker 2: I missed that conversation. Where's she at least she says,
you know, it doesn't matter, grandfather, grandpa whatever, blah blah blah.
I mean I needed that, some kind of dialogue, some
sort of like conversation about and they just show them
dancing and the movie ends.
Speaker 3: I agree, I missed that part. I agree. It's cute.
It's a cute film.
Speaker 2: It is a cute feel.
Speaker 1: Everybody is doing good work in the film. But ultimately,
for me, the perspective of the film seems a little
smug and removed from the people it's depicting, and that
is my That has always been my issue with it,
along with the aesthetic of it, which just that is
not what poor people look like in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: It's just not it's it's it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's just little things like the grandfather dies and
they had everything planned back where they're from, you know,
for the funeral and everything, but the grandfather died, and
all of a sudden he has money to ship the
grandfather and all that, and it just I mean, call
someone to exactly, it's just all right, where is this
money coming from? Yeah, it doesn't. It goes in and out.
Their money problems.
Speaker 1: It's like it just goes in or out, like they
have money problems until the film needs to do something,
and then they don't have money problems anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, yes, we only order something that you know,
up to four dollars, you know at the dynas exactly,
you're going to go to that level, and then they did. Yeah,
it just doesn't or you're getting three hotel rooms like that.
I was like, you know, my parents did not get
three hotel rooms. They piled us all into one. Oh
my god. All right, so I think that's it. Yeah,
all right, So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching it again,
A right did too.
Speaker 3: And maybe you did.
Speaker 2: Two. Would love to hear your thoughts on it, especially
your thoughts on like the class depiction and whether or
not I'm out of line for thinking the film was
a little smug.
Speaker 3: We'll be back next week with Blue Moon, which I'm
actually looking forward to because I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: The great movie.
Speaker 3: And uh, until then, take care of yourself, love you
mean it. Bye bye bye