What 'Little Miss Sunshine' Still Gets Right About Mental Health
By Zara Dosanjh
“A real loser is somebody that’s so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.”
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
It’s been twenty years since Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton’s chaotic ensemble comedy Little Miss Sunshine hit the big screen, and its wry philosophy hasn’t aged a day since. The Oscar-winning classic stars Abigail Breslin as Olive, a seven-year-old who wants nothing more than to win the titular child beauty pageant. Olive’s loving yet dysfunctional family is painstakingly determined to get her to the competition, and they soon embark on an 800-mile road trip where just about everything that could go wrong inevitably does.
Little Miss Sunshine takes its well-meaning characters and unsuspecting audience on a philosophical odyssey bearing lessons in mortality, dreams, and failure on the road to California. Each character has a distinct part to play in the film’s mapping of the human psyche, namely Frank, swept up in a disorienting blur of family affairs following his suicide attempt, and Olive, steadfast in her unwavering ambition, despite creeping doubts and comparison rearing its ugly head.
Two decades on, Little Miss Sunshine is as relevant as ever. The feelings of inadequacy and inaction that stick to Olive, Frank, and the rest of the family speak to the average mental health of anyone burnt out and weighed down by the irksome year of 2026. The flock of contestants Olive compares herself to holds an eerie likeness to the sea of influencers that wash over our feeds daily. Olive’s older brother Dwayne’s seismic meltdown, over the realisation that he will never be able to live out his dreams, not to any fault of his own, is an all too familiar feeling to anyone stripped of ever reaching their dreams due to factors outside themselves.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Despite their world unravelling, the Hoover family are unfortunately stuck in a swamp of chaos, half their own choosing, half just plain bad luck. Nothing turns out the way they would hope, but these feelings of despair aren’t taboo in Little Miss Sunshine. Faris and Dayton demand we sit in the family’s discomfort, and at times look it right in the eye; Frank wears thick bandages on his wrist for the film’s entirety, a reminder that we’re in the direct aftermath of his own mental fracturing.
Little Miss Sunshine teaches that the world doesn’t stop for anybody, not even in the midst of your own crisis. It also teaches, however, that there is a choice: whether or not you decide to try again. Life is a sequence of opportunities to pick yourself up and dust off the failures. We’re too hard on ourselves, more than ever in this age of perfection defining the 2020s. We funnel ourselves into crises when things don’t go our way. But for the sake of mental fortitude, we must forgo perfection.
Dance at a beauty pageant even if you’re not someone's idea of beauty! Find humor in your family, no matter how messy they are. And no matter how treacherous the road back is, let the obstacles come. Maybe even learn to rejoice in them as the Hoover family does, and know you’re stepping out onto a better road.
