Gary A. Warner, travel editor of the Orange County (Calif.) Register, said that watching this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture was like taking a road trip without leaving town.
He had this to say about “Little Miss Sunshine”:
The locations: A story about a family road trip from Albuquerque to Los Angeles to attend a junior beauty pageant should be ripe for great travel scenes. The real route includes old Route 66, with its gigantic jackrabbit sculptures, Meteor Crater, and colorful towns like Gallup, N.M., and Seligman, Ariz. But this $8 million picture was filmed almost entirely in the Los Angeles area. The take-out chicken served in Albuquerque is actually from Dinah’s Family Restaurant in Los Angeles. The Arizona diner scene was shot in La Puente, with menus from Pann’s, the legendary L.A. “googie” style restaurant just north of LAX. A photo of Monument Valley in a motel room is as close to a Southwestern location as the main characters get. Even when the dysfunctional family arrives in what the movie says is Redondo Beach, it’s really Ventura. The quirky film is about the people in the old yellow Volkswagen bus, not the scenery outside.
Favorite scene: The infrequent “B-unit” shots of the bright yellow Volkswagen rolling through northern Arizona is as evocative as it gets. But anyone who has taken a long road trip will relate to the constant family bickering during the 800-mile drive.
I’ve seen “Little Miss Sunshine,” and Warner’s take seems accurate to me. For a more comprehensive taste of Route 66, in spite of its obviously fictional story, go see two-time Oscar nominee “Cars.”