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Olive Hoover is the main protagonist of the movie Little Miss Sunshine. She is played by Abigail Breslin.
Biography[]
Olive comes from a dysfunctional family and she wins the Little Miss Sunshine entrée form, which entails her to be a contestant in the beauty pageant. What they didn't tell Olive was that the MC was a pedophile. But they nonetheless get in their minivan and go to California to enter in the pageant.
Along the way, Olive's family comes across many obstacles, such as police and family fallouts, but their grandpa dies before they can enter. Olive looked to him for advice such as whether she was a loser or not and she was distraught at his death. They steal his body and drive to the motel.
In the motel, the official rages at them for "being late" and they only just get into the pageant. Olive has doubts about how she could do a pageant surrounded by more athletic girls, but her mother says she can either enter or back out and her family won't think any worse of her. Her mother says to hell with what the crowd thinks. Olive bravely chooses to enter.
Here, the contest MC introduces himself and the young contestant girls enter to do their routines. Olive is up against far more attractive girls, and they are all experts at their routines. The girls all show off their routines and they seem more confident than her. Olive is immediately sneered at by a thin girl in a pink bikini in the pageant; and Olive is shocked to see that the perverted MC is lusting after some of the girls, and that one of the girls, the very same little girl in the pink bikini who sneered at her earlier, is actually attracted to the Host - she sees the Host lusting at her and, smirking lustfully at him and sneering at the audience; shows the Host her bare shoulders and puts more far enthusiasm into her dances than Olive does and smirks at him.
Eager to win the Pageant as the deadline draws nearer, Olive does the best routine she can think of, but unlike the more ambitious ones by the other girls, hers is just walking round onstage. Inevitably, the officials don't think much of her and barely register her, to her dad's disbelief.
Meanwhile, the MC continues his perverted actions, such as smirking and singing at the girls as they do their routines. Many of the girls are spooked by the perverted MC and stare in disbelief at each other onstage at his spooky actions to them, however the girl in the pink bikini, who is now in a green evening gown, is so obsessed with the Host that she stares in disbelief at how shocked the other girls are at the Host. Because of her lust for both the Host and power, but girl becomes progressively nastier throughout the Pageant, she had first started by laughing at Olive's weight but she gets even nastier due to her obsession with the Host. To try to win him over, this same girl tries to report Olive's brother Dwayne for "trespassing" backstage when all he is trying to do is find his sister, but he shuts her down by shouting at her to take him backstage.
As the last girl in the contest, the girl in green leaves having just done a dance and smirking that the MC is for once applauding her, Olive comes on. Olive does a dance dedicated to her grandpa. She says, "He's in the boot of our car." Olive rips off her clothes and does a rather promiscuous dance but the truth is it's not sexual at all, as opposed to the others and the girl in green's dances earlier, it's innocent. She, however, entices the MC who watches perversely. However, the officials demand Olive removed offstage, and her family join Olive onstage to "kick ass" and the MC chases Olive to remove her. Her dad comes to her rescue, and he sprains the MC's wrist, causing him to retreat, firstly destroying his support for the little girl in green and denying her chance to ultimately win the Pageant as she hoped; ending the little girl in green's rivalry with Olive because the contest is over, and also destroying Olive's chance of winning the contest. But thus she does have a good time with her family. "Kicking ass, that's what she's doing," her father announces. The contest is called off and Olive's family are made to leave the Pageant.
Olive is banned from beauty contests in California but leaves with her family, with her family's truck broken down and honking its horn, annoying other drivers.
Personality[]
Olive was an insecure, introverted young girl who was very embarrassed about her poverty and her weight, but she realized, during the trip, that other people (such as her father and his ex-boyfriend and her brother with his confidence issues) have bigger problems than her. Unlike the lustful, fame-seeking, selfish, nasty, condescending and sycophantic young girl in the pink bikini, Olive was pure, loving, giving, generous, thoughtful, selfless and diligent, whereas the girl in the pink bikini was lazy and overconfident that she would win, and slouched and put little effort in, Olive practised as hard as she could and was anxious on the day of the show but ironically this anxiousness made her all the more determined to win and expose the MC whereas her rival, the girl in the pink bikini, pretended she was cool as ice when underneath she was actually sweating. Olive's anxiety helped her prevail whereas with both the little girl in the pink bikini and the Pageant Host their overconfidence bought about both their downfalls; and she was not taking part in the Pageant through any means of fame-seeking or greed, unlike her rival in the pink bikini who wanted to win it and trash Olive. She was just doing it to make her family proud of her and to have a good time. En route, however, she realized all her family couldn't be prouder of her anyway and it didn't even matter if she did the Pageant or not. However, she was determined to "Kick ass" and she went into the Pageant despite her insecurities and fears of crowds, thus showing how kickass she really was.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Olive begins the film as a somewhat spoiled insecure girl who is anxious about her weight but as the film moves on through her adventures she matures and becomes a much tougher individual and is terrified of less. Her experiences in the Pageant with the perverted MC give her more of a taste of what dangers are in the world and yet she ends up exposing the guy and struggles through. Even though she doesn't win, she still exposes the Pageant Host for being a pervert and to boot, also trashes her rival, the girl in the pink bikini's, chances of winning.
- Olive's weight is a running gag in the film. She is trying to lose weight for the Pageant on the road trip but her family pressure her to eat ice cream in a joke about her missing out on the fun. Then in the Pageant itself when Olive first meets the girl in the pink bikini, the girl in pink turns round resplendent in her indecent pink bikini and sneers at Olive for being fat, showing to Olive that even amongst kids her age there are bullies. Indeed, not only does the girl in pink sneer at Olive, but she is also determined to stick up for the MC and tries to get Olive's brother in trouble when he goes backstage looking for her.