More Sunshine

And yet another comment about Little Miss Sunshine.

I'm sure I said this in my original review, but as I rarely go back and re-read my old stuff, I don't know for sure.

Basically, except for the mother and grandfather, this film questions whether we should try to achieve goals in our lives. The father is a motivational speaker who can't get his career on track. The son wants to fly jets, but ultimately can't because he's color-blind. The uncle (Steve Carrell) wants to be the top Proust scholar in the world, but everyone keeps saying he's second best. The daughter wants to (sort of) win a beauty contest, though she's somewhat clueless enough not to realize what it really takes to win.

In a nutshell, the film points out that we all fail, and sometimes, we shouldn't compete, at least, not if it means our entire self-esteem is built around some notion of success. In the end, there's family, and family's there to take care of you.

As an aside, I was reading some review about Ecan Almighty and how Steve Carrell has become the new Jim Carrey, not so much because they are the same personalities. Far from it. Carrey has mad antics, while Steve has more of an everyman quality, and it shows in particular, in this role, which he underplays some, mostly because he's not generally the kind of person to go Carrey overboard.