In retrospect the thing that saves Little Miss Sunshine for me (and its a much better film in my memory) is that there is a dark sense of the absurd in it which is unusual for US films. Dark is usual, sneering, sincere and meaningful are all things that US indies strive for, but rarely is there a sense of the edge of madness which this film skates so well. And really should end with rather than its hugs, cos the trip back is going to be hell.

As for Little Miss Sunshines European Vacation – hoo boy, just you wait til you see what that crazy Eric Idle adds to the mix.

1) As lots of people have pointed out, it is essentially National Lampoon’s Vacation with added references to Nietzsche and Proust, and fairly simplistic ones at that.*

2) I don’t buy Steve Carrell as a top Proust scholar.

3) How was Olive meant to have come second in a regional heat when the film later showed as how well trained the other contestants are?

4) Pete is right: they all get over stuff way too easily.

5) [SPOILERS] I’m not sure that the audience and organisers would have been scandalised by Olive’s routine: surely the whole child beauty pageant world has at its core the notion that nothing little girls do can be sexual – and to think otherwise would be to be forced to confront how creepy the whole thing really is. I think Olive’s dancing, rather than accidentally hurling the ugly truth in their face, would have just bounced serenely off the wall of denial and been judged cute but lacking in skill.

*There are a couple of good pieces by Julian McLaren-Ross where he suggests that a lot of what got critics (at the time) excited by in Orwell’s 1984 was actually run-of-the-mill stuff for anyone who consumed lots of pulp sci-fi and adventure stories, but few of the heavyweight lit-crit chaps of the ’40s were aware of this. Likewise, some of those bigging up Little Miss Sunshine may have been insufficiently immersed in the Chevy Chase canon.