Little Miss Sunshine
Upon watching this movie in regards to the blog question concerning this movie, my immediate response was to say that each member of the family took some sort of journey throughout the piece. Although I do not deny this now, I reread the question asking not "who went on a journey?" but "who was the journey for?" When implying causality, the question is obvious, Olive. I believe the question goes deeper then this though and although the journey did start as Olive's quest to Little Miss Sunshine, I believe that the viewer, through the character Richard, was truly the one to journey. He is the one who we, or at least I, find to be the prominent character who delivers the major themes in film as he is in need of change more then any of the others and on that subject the family seems to agree. They have no problem with their grandpa being a heroin addict, the fact that Dwayne hasn't spoken in 9 months makes little difference to them, the fact that Olive is obsessed with vanity is ignored and even the fact that Frank is a gay man that just attempted to kill himself after an obsession over a student subsequently getting him fired has little dialogue amongst the family after the original outbreak at the dinner table. Richard, on the other hand is constantly subjected to the family's irritation with him for speaking his mind on a road to self-help, the only real positive problem in the film. Upon examination, the only shots made in this film against any other character was initiated by Richard, including the dinner outbreak, and was quickly turned against him and his annoying 9 step gag. What did Richard need to learn so terribly then? I think he needed to, and succeeded in doing so, learn a quote he never heard. When Dwayne and Frank were on the dock, Dwayne proclaims, "Do what you love, fuck everything else." This statement reflects Richard's obvious new outlook on life. Though it is my belief that Dwayne truly had this mindset to some extent the entire film, Richard was obsessed with the difference between Losers and Winners and it took the failures of everyone on the trip, including himself, for him to realize this. Dwayne failed at getting into the Air Force Academy, Grandpa died due to a possible heroin overdose, Frank failed as a Proust scholar when his rival got a genius award in a subject Frank felt he knew better, Sheryl has failed at holding the family together (Something assigned to her as her main objective in the film) and it was finally revealed to the rest of the family that Olive would never be a beauty queen. FInally, Richard's self help book deal fell through bringing truly home for the first time that even if you do everything you possibly can, failure is still an option when associating winning with success. This is where doing what you love has to be done for some intrinsic value aside from winning. Although every character goes through a journey, at the end of the film, Richard finally understands this concept and makes the journey for him.