The Great Ganesha

Grade: B

Here’s an interesting recipe. Combine: (1) a failing motivational speaker; (2) his heroin-addicted father; (3) his Nietzche-obsessed step-son; (4) his chubby, prepubescent, Miss America-wannabe daughter; (5) his weary wife; and (6) her brother, a suicidal Proust scholar. Throw them all into a beat-up, banana yellow VW van, get them on the road, and keep it going for over an hour and a half. What you’re left with is a satirical, but warm look at dysfunction in suburbia, created by the husband-wife team of Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, who graduate from music videos to their feature film debut.

The Opening
The movie begins at dinner-time, in a kitchen that is set in the height of fashion – of the 1950s, that is. Dinner is a bucket of fried chicken thrown in the center of the table by wife and mom, Sheryl, followed by placing unmatched plates and glasses (including what looks like a “super-sized” drink container saved from a fast-food joint) scrounged up from the kitchen cabinets. The crockery itself is reflective of the characters: Unique, with nicks and scratches, some more used than others. And each serves a purpose within the context of the movie. Most importantly though, they are all there not by choice, but by necessity. And this gives us the crucial ingredient that makes for some interesting family dynamics for all and, in particular, the Hoovers.

The Hoovers
Richard (Greg Kinnear), the father, is a motivational speaker with more steps in his nine-step plan than followers. Unable to convince the masses about its efficacy, he shoves it down his family’s throat. Sheryl (Toni Collette), is Richard’s tired wife, and is the only one who comes close to being categorized as “normal” (whatever that means). She tries to keep a semblance of sanity in the family, while trying hard to keep her own at the same time. Dwayne (Paul Dano), Sheryl’s son, is convinced that he’s a Nitzchean superman, and has taken a vow of silence until he gets admitted into the Air Force Academy. Olive (Abigail Breslin), is chubby, bespectacled, prepubescent and totally obessesed by the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. We see her practicing her “winning smile” against a video-taped Miss America pageant winner in the opening scenes. Steve Carell does an excellent job of playing Frank, the “Number One Proust scholar in America.” Having recently attempted suicide over one of his graduate students, he’s living with his sister while he recovers. Grandpa, played wonderfully by Alan Arkin, is the most entertaining of them all. Having no qualms about saying what he thinks, in no uncertain terms and with the most colorful language, his character is best revealed when he is discussing his sexploits at the retirement home he was booted out of. He tells Frank about the home:

Frank: I take it you didn’t like it at Sunset Manor?
Grandpa: Are you kidding me? It was a fucking paradise. They got pool… They got golf… Now I’m stuck with Mr. Happy here, sleeping on a fucking sofa. Look, I know you are a homo and all, but maybe you can appreciate this. You go to one of those places, there’s four women for every guy. Can you imagine what that’s like?
Frank: You must have been very busy.
Grandpa: Ho ho! I had second degree burns on my johnson, I kid you not.

Both Sheryl and Richard try in vain to keep him in check, but says Grandpa:

I can say what I want – I still got Nazi bullets in my ass.

The Dysfunctional Family
In an excessively individualistic culture, a cohesive family unit finds it difficult, if not impossible, to actually converge on anything. Yet, in what might be one of the greatest ironies of them all, they are stuck with each other. By creating as diverse a set of characters as these, and by putting them into a van for an extended period of time, Faris and Dayton create a petri dish, as it were, for classic family dysfunction. The movie has some incredibly hilarious moments, such as in one of the opening scenes when Sheryl goes to bring Frank home from the hospital after his suicide attempt:

Sheryl: I’m so glad you’re still here…
Frank: Well that makes one of us.

The Message
There even seems to be a message at the end of the movie about the culture of “Number One” in America – where you don’t matter unless you’re the best, or the most beautiful. Appropriate to the metaphor of the beauty contest, the message is succinctly wrapped up in something that Dwayne, the Dano character says,

You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work… Fuck that.

By constantly competing, by striving endlessly to become “more beautiful”, each of the characters is either heading towards disaster, or is already there. Olive, chubby and bespectacled, is only setting herself up for disappointment by competing in this regional beauty pageant. In an attempt to win over the most “beautiful” student, Frank ends up attempting suicide. Richard, in an attempt to help others succeed and, at the same time, succeed himself, ends up doing nothing more than making us laugh. Dwayne, strives to be an ubermensch, but is nothing more than a rebellious teenager. Grandpa, who says it like it is, and doesn’t give a damn, is the happiest (and the funniest) of them all.

The Little Movie That Could
Faris and Dayton took five years to make this movie, from start to finish, mostly due to financial reasons. Originally starting to work with Focus Features, they eventually had creative differences and ended up financing the film independently. They also had difficulties with the shooting, and although the movie is now shot in the southwest, they originally intended it to be in the southeast.

Despite these obstacles however, or perhaps because of them, they create a highly entertaining feature. Although the warmth of the movie takes the bite out of the satire, and the message makes the dark comedy a little less dark, there are enough funny moments in there to make it quite watchable. If it is to make the movie appeal to a wider audience, the warmth and the message work wonders. The movie has surpassed many expectations to become ‘The Little Movie That Could’.

Originally posted on Desicritics.org. [link]

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