It was one of the more popular indie films at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and also apparently one of the most expensive. It’s also been getting great reviews left, right and centre so last night Justine and I decided we’d go see Little Miss Sunshine. Since it was Tight Arse Tuesday (making the cinema prices almost reasonable), we also opted to eat out for dinner and we had great burgers at Grill’d (I had a lamb one and Justine’s was a vegan vegie pattie).

The movie centres around a semi-functional family who travel cross-country to get their young daughter to a beauty pageant. The central story is interesting and I found myself really wanting to find out what happened to the characters. However, I saw very little character development on the less-important characters, and though they had side stories they never seemed to be focused on except to fill in what would have otherwise been slower scenes. It would have been nice to see the side stories fleshed out a little more (perhaps they were and had been cut).

Right at the end of the film, during the talent portion of the beauty pageant the young girl — Olive — performs her act which is probably the funniest part of the entire film. In fact, it almost seems as though the first 90 minutes are a lead up to that pay off.

Unless of course you asked the people to the left and behind us. They were laughing and pretty much every second line, whether it was funny or not. In addition, their laughs would always end with a little sigh, which became incredibly easy to predict. The lady behind us also seemed to think she was in a recording booth to record a commentary track for the DVD release of the film. Really, when you’re in a cinema, why comment on each and every scene to the person with you (unless they’re blind I suppose, which they weren’t)? They’re in the cinema too! Single worst reason to go to the cinemas: the other people.

The experience was less than satisying but overall I’m still happy since the film itself was so good. We don’t see many “indie” films (the last few that immediately come to mind were Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite and Sideways), but they’re usually very good.