Oscarwatch.com’s Sasha Stone pretty much nails part of the main reason for Little Miss Sunshine‘s popular groundswell of support when she points out the film’s rootedness in idealism in these turbulent times, and its contrast in this manner to the rest of the nominees. Still, while I’d agree with her analysis in respect to the film’s nomination, I’m not yet officially 100% sure this can be extended to a hypothesis that foretells a victory. Best Picture Oscar winners whose directors aren’t at least same-nominated for Academy Awards are few and far between.

But again, Little Miss Sunshine carries the impression of weight or substance, and it’s all pitched in such a heightened fashion as to make audiences feel both that their lives aren’t quite as screwy and/or depressing, and that there’s a profundity at its core. This is why many folks who don’t typically bite on traditional comedies really like the movie. And Fox Searchlight has run a very smart, shrewd awards campaign. So in the end it doesn’t matter that the seams of its story show, or that the characters are willfully colorful responses to the
sort of stale, cardboard characters we see in many broadly pitched,
mainstream comedies — atypical, therefore, but just as flatly
two-dimensional and in blind service to the contrivances of plot as
their less original contemporaries. No, Little Miss Sunshine is beloved because we all want to believe in goodness. It would be interesting to ponder the film’s reception, though, in a parallel universe in which the disasterous quagmire of the Iraq War didn’t exist.