This film distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures in 2006 is one of the few husband-wife directed films. Indeed, Jonathan Dayton partnered up with his wife Valerie Faris to provide this excellent comedy-drama road film. It is an American movie filmed in Arizona and Southern California although the family home is in New Mexico in the story. Sheryl Hoover and Richard Hoover are parents of two children. In their home, they host Sheryl’s brother and Richard’s father. The characters all have different problematicissues they have to deal with in their everyday life. The events begin when the family travels to California for little daughter Olive’s beauty pageant. Throughout the road tripthe family suffers numerous setbacks. The movie presents cultural performances from the characters’ actions.

 

First of all, Olive Hoover is like many little American girls who want to followthe American dream. She wants to participate in a beauty pageant. From all of what she has seen at school or on TV she decided that what is interesting for her is to compete against girl her age to see who is the most beautiful. Itis important to mention that Olive is chubby, very pale and untrained for beauty pageants conventions. Since her parents know it is one of her dream, they support her to do it. At this moment the family travels 800 miles in a minivan to get to the beauty pageant. Grandpa Edwinis a heroin-addict. He repeats during the movie to live your life to the maximum because you never know when you will die. He teaches unusual things to his grandchildren and is a very special grandfather, but Olive really likes her. In the middle ofthe movie, Edwin sadly dies of a heroin overdose. Olive’s brother, Dwayne is also very special. He has taken a vow of silence until he can accomplish his dream of becoming a pilot. Later in the movie, he discovers that he is color blind and therefore cannot become a pilot. He goes crazy and starts speaking again. Another character is Frank the uncle. Frank is homosexual and is living home with the Hoovers after failing his suicide attempt. During the trip, he came up face to face with his ex-boyfriend whom prompted his suicide attempt. Richard for himself is a great supportive husband and he is working hard to have a successful career.

 

On the road to California, Richard has a phone call telling him he lost an important contract. It is Richard who has the idea of doing the illegal action of transporting Edwin’s dead body in the trunk to be in time for the beauty pageant. For her part, Sheryl is trying to calm everybody in the van all along the ride. Finally arrived at the beauty pageant, Olive finds out that it may not be from winning the beauty pageant that will make her happy, but presenting in honor of her grandfather. At this moment, we can observe how Olive’s values are different than all the little girls. Her choreography horrified the public, but Olive did not care, she enjoyed it. The rest of the family jumped in to support her.

 

In the end, we can observe different cultural performances from the character as everyone had some rough moments to face throughout the film. Most of their actions ended up in a failure. Finally, we managed to see how they responded to everybody telling them how they could not go beyond this point (at the garage, at the hospital, at the pageant).