Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine will definitely capture your heart. It is a hilarious and often heartfelt tale about a family torn apart by a overwhelming drive for success. However, several lessons learned along the way bring the family closer together.

The family is your typical American, dysfunctional family, reminiscent of the family in the Squid in the Whale and Napolean Dynamite. Every member has his or her quirks: the father is trying to make it big as a motivational speaker, the grandfather is a brutally honest heroine addict, the uncle is a gay, suicidal genius, the mother is trapped in a KFC dinner cycle, the son has sworn silence until he becomes a pilot, and the daughter is obsessed with winning her beauty pageant.

A phone call forces the family on a road trip from Albequerque to LA. They have 2 days to arrive in LA for a beauty pageant. Several hilarious bumps along the way bring the family closer together. I will not give away any of the details, but you will be laughing out loud. In the end, the daughter gives a very "unique" performance. This allows the family to realize that, despite their own failures and flaws, everything is ok. The world will push you around, it will bring you down, it will tell you you're not good enough, but as long as you have people to love and people who love you than maybe things aren't so bad.

Not only is the story excellent, the acting is superb. Steve Carrell does an awesome job as the uncle, Greg Kinnear plays a very convincing dad, and Abigail Breslin steals the show as the daughter.

Although some of the scenes are a bit disturbing, especially those of the beauty pageant, I still thoroughly enjoyed this film. I give it 3 and 1/2 stars.
1/2

Snakes on a Plane

Ah, yes, the overly-hiped movie Snakes on a Plane has finally made its theatrical debut. And I have to admit that I loved the film. Or maybe I should rather say: I loved watching the film. You can really get in to the movie by seeing and hearing the audience reaction as the characters are bitten by snakes in as many creative ways as possible.

The story begins in the most cheesiest of manners: a man, Sean Jones, witnesses a murder in a remote location on the island of Hawaii. Immediately following the death, Sean decides to peel out on his motorbike, alerting the killer, Chen Leong, to his wherabouts. (stupid, stupid man. didn't anyone ever tell him to remain quietly hidden until the coast is clear?)

Not only the killer's men but Samuel L. Jackson somehow find Sean at exactly the same time in his Hawaiian home a day or two later. Samuel shoots the evil men and convinces the boy to fly to LA to testify in Chen's trial, an infamous assassin who is also notorious for murdering witnesses to his crimes.

After "exhausting all other means" of taking out the witness, the next logical step for Chen is to hide extremely poisonous snakes on board the witness' flight to LA. To begin the madness, there is the obligatory sex scene where snakes attack love-struck passengers in the airplane bathroom. All hell really breaks loose when turbulence knocks open the oxygen masks to open causing snakes to fall on the passengers.

After a grueling hour or so of watching people brutally die by snake, Samuel finally yells the words everyone is waiting for: "Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf***ing snakes on this motherf***ing plane!"I couldn't have agreed more.

I won't give away the ending since it is genius and should be enjoyed purely by any geek. I will say this: it is absolutely ridiculous and really makes the entire film worth watching.

I think the movie is truely a classic of its type. The cheesy lines live up to their full potential. The mediocre acting makes the film come alive. The snakes do not disappoint. I give it 4 motherf***ing snakes..err.. I mean potatoes.

Cold Mountain

Argh! Why do I continually watch these sappy, sad romantic movies? Cold Mountain falls into the same pace as so many other typical love/loss movies: First, there's love. Then, there's separation. Then, the lovers reunite. Finally, there's eternal separation. The theme arises in so many movies today, it's as if we're addicted to sadness and crying.

So, basically that's the summary of the movie (see previous paragraph), but here are more of the details: the movie is set in the Civil War Era. Ada (Nicole Kidman), a Southern Belle, moves into a sparsely populated mountain community in the North. She immediately develops feelings for Inman, a quiet, rustic man. They have one passionate kiss before he marches off to war.

Inman's troup encounters heavy artillery from the South. He is badly wounded and sent to the enemy's hospital. Luckily, he is able to escape and begins his journey back to his one love, Ada. In the North, Ada is waiting desperately for Inman. She must survive several harsh winters plus the death of her father. She would never have made it if it wasn't for the help of Ruby (Renee Zellweger).

Ada and Inman struggle through many hardships in order to see each other once again. And finally, the time arrives when they reunite. They spend one night in each other's arms. However, the next day, psychotic proponents of the Northern Army come looking for Ruby because she helped an army deserter. In a dramatic shoot-out, Inman is shot. He comes stumbling back to Ada, but dies in her arms.

I had hope that this one would be good. Maybe it would be different from the other tragic love stories. Maybe there would be a happy ending... And, I thought, "Oh, Renee Zelleweger won best supporting actress. She's a good actress; it must be a good movie."

In the end, however, I only felt aggravated at having watched this film. First, being the female that I am, I was forced to have water pour from my eyes despite my strongest intentions to stop such a weak display! What good does this do me? I only end up sad. Also, I feel like I wasted 2.5 hours. The entire movie was about how the lovers were trying to reunite. And once they did, they were immediately separated. What a build up and let down. Couldn't they have had more than one night together?

Overall, this is just another potentially good romantic comedy gone wrong. I give it 1 1/2 potatoes.
1/2