I was just watching Little Miss Sunshine and realized that there’s a whole genre of movies that this one falls into, and they’re mostly a product of the last decade. Namely, the story of some (usually upper-middle-class) family, though not always upper-class but never explicitly lower-class, composed typically of parents with intellectual yet tortured personalities, kids who are at once spoiled but also hate their lives and are full of emotional drama, and to top it off, there’s usually some old family patriarch with a quirky, odd-ball personality.
Movies I can think of that fall into this category:
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The Royal Tenenbaums
The Squid and the Whale
Little Miss Sunshine
The Chumscrubber
Igby Goes Down
Imaginary Heroes (which I haven’t even seen, but the preview, I just assume it’s one of these. I could be wrong.)
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Does anyone know what kind of movie I’m talking about? It seems to be a recent phenomenon and these type of movies tend to be popular with the hipster crowd.
I don’t think the family in Little Miss Sunshine would be considered upper-middle-class at all . . . but I do have an idea of what movies you’re talking about. Running With Scissors would fall into that category, I guess. (It’s a TERRIBLE movie though.)
It seemed like the family in Little Miss Sunshine seemed fairly well-off (they had a pretty nice house and Greg Kinnear’s character seemed to have a good job as some kind of motivational speaker or something.) They did drive a battered VW bus but I chalked that up to stylistic quirkiness. But granted, I only got about 20 minutes into the movie - my GF fell asleep and I wanted to be able to watch it with her later so I turned it off.
He’s actually portrayed as somewhat of a failure if you watch the rest of the movie. I guess it also depends on how you define upper-middle-class, though. For me class distinctions seem to depend on education and background as well as financial status.
TV shows also love to include upper-middle-class dysfunctional families as well (like Meredith Grey from Grey’s Anatomy.)
Arrested Development would be a great example of the latter. Although it’s a little more surrealist, comedic and altogether less serious than the type of genre I’m talking about. And, about the class distinction thing, the people in Little Miss Sunshine seemed to me to be at least of upper educational status (they seemed like they might have been ex-hippies or ex-beatnicks or something, but definitely from an at least somewhat intellectual background.)
A good chunk of the movie actually describes how poor they are and how Greg Kinnear is not a good motivational speaker and that he can’t provide for his family.
They hit all the other qualities of these movies, but not the “upper middle class” part.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. And, about the class distinction thing, the people in Little Miss Sunshine seemed to me to be at least of upper educational status (they seemed like they might have been ex-hippies or ex-beatnicks or something, but definitely from an at least somewhat intellectual background. (From my last post:)
The Royal Tenenbaums only fits because they lost most of their money. Technically speaking, the Tenenbaum were firmly in the upper class. Middle class was clearly beneath them.
Not sure if you’d include Wonder Boys, since it’s not really about family life but it certainly has the same feel as the rest of the genre.
Well done in identifying the genre. I’m a big fan of every movie named so far except Chumscrubber, which I haven’t seen simply because the title looks so stupid. I’ve almost taped it a dozen times on DVR, but that title… Now that I know it’s part of this genre, I’ll toss it in the queue.
Yeah, in Little Miss Sunshine they are lower middle-class. Part of the point is that they are really worried about money troubles. Kinnear WANTS to get into the upper-middle but he can’t quite make it.
My friend calls these movies ‘Suburban Dystopia’.
The Ice Storm though isn’t funny. Should we segregate dramas from comedies? Ang Lee doesn’t do chuckles I’ve found.
It’s an older movie, but how about Ordinary People? Or does the death of one of the children take it out of the dysfunctional-for-no-good-reason category?
Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson in Long Days Journey Into Night (1962), Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces (1970), Elliott Gould in Little Murders (1971), and Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978).
If you want to upscale to ‘rich’, there is practically a whole genre of films from the 30’s with that general theme called ‘screwball comedies’.
My Man Godfrey and Bringing Up Baby come to mind, but there’s a while lot of them. Distracted rich capitalist fathers with goofy families, or distracted academic professors with goofy families, take your choice.
The video store I go to has a Valentine’s Day section with about 30 movies. The Squid and the Whale is one of them along with movies like When Harry Met Sally or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. I laugh ever time I see it thinking about some poor couple that rents it for a nice romantic evening.
I think The Ref qualifies for what the OP is looking for. It’s a Christmas movie and it has Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary and it’s very funny. The perfect movie.