Valerie Faris is good at giving awkward people room to be funny without dismissing them. Working with Jonathan Dayton, she gets persuasive performances from an ensemble, even when Little Miss Sunshine over-explains its lessons about success.
Fi1m perspective
In Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Greg Kinnear makes Richard Hoover difficult company without making him unbearable. Toni Collette's Sheryl supplies the practical sense the family needs, while Paul Dano's Dwayne remains part of it even when he would rather not be. Faris and Jonathan Dayton give those differences time to cause friction. We laughed at the family arguments because so little provocation was needed to set them going. That patience with people is the strongest reason to seek out her work.
The route to that feature debut ran through music videos and commercials in the 1980s. Ruby Sparks (2012) followed, taking creativity and authorship into a romantic comedy-drama, then Battle of the Sexes (2017) turned to the tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Their later television work includes episodes of Living with Yourself (2019) and Fleishman Is in Trouble (2022). Across different subjects, they remain reluctant to turn difficult people into simple villains.
Faris and Dayton have no fixed division of labour, so assigning the kindness to one and the jokes to the other would be guesswork. Editor Pamela Martin has worked with them on three films. Their use of improvisation and actor input suits an ensemble such as that of Little Miss Sunshine, where Kinnear and Collette keep their characters from becoming collections of eccentricities. The family still has to travel together after each argument, which gives the actors something to play beyond the next joke.
The weakness is how explicitly Little Miss Sunshine explains itself. The script assigns its characters difficulties rather efficiently, and the journey sometimes becomes too convenient for them. Faris and Dayton's patience keeps much of this tolerable, but the insistence on telling us what to think about winning makes the comedy less convincing. There is enough to recognise in these relatives without having their significance pointed out. We would start with Little Miss Sunshine for the family arguments, accepting that it occasionally stops to explain a lesson we had already understood.
Biography
Valerie Faris is an American film and television director who works in partnership with her husband Jonathan Dayton. They began their careers directing music videos for artists including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M. and the Smashing Pumpkins, as well as commercials and episodes of the HBO series Mr. Show with Bob and David. Faris, the daughter of film editor Jim Faris, met Dayton while studying at UCLA.
Their feature directorial debut was the comedy Little Miss Sunshine (2006). They later directed the romantic comedy-drama Ruby Sparks (2012) and the biographical sports film Battle of the Sexes (2017). Their television work includes the Netflix series Living with Yourself (2019) and episodes of the Hulu series Fleishman Is in Trouble (2022).
