The new musical âLittle Miss Sunshineâ opens with an emotional cloudburst. As the fractured family at the center of the show gathers for dinner, just about everyone has a grim comment to make on the state of existence.  âIf you think life improves, thatâs not how the earth moves,â mom opines. âDisappointment is what life brings.â  âLips that should be kissed are not kissed,â grandpa chimes in.  âDreams that shouldnât die, die,â sings uncle â he of the recently slashed wrists.  But if you find yourself thinking, âOh dear, what Stephen Sondheim has wrought,â think again. Or just recall the trajectory of the popular movie of the same title, from which the show is adapted. Like that Oscar-laureled film, the musical soon makes a U-turn to head into peppier territory, with everyone arriving at a state of reasonable contentment in time for that âshake your ba donk a donkâ pageant climax.  âLittle Miss Sunshine,â which opened on Thursday night at the Second Stage Theater, is the work of two venerable musical-theater veterans. The score is by William Finn, the composer and lyricist best known for âFalsettosâ and âThe 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,â who writes light-fingered melodies and well-turned lyrics, often infused with dark, acerbic humor, as in that opening number.Â James Lapine, who directed those shows and wrote the book for âFalsettos,â repeats both those chores here. He has also memorably collaborated with Mr. Sondheim, of course, and knows well how to dig into a characterâs burdened heart and to find contrasting shades of light and dark in any story.  And yet âLittle Miss Sunshineâ represents middle-of-the-pack work for both of these gifted artists: Neither gravely disappointing nor entirely rewarding, the musical coasts along perkily as it follows a dysfunctional family on a cross-country journey of emotional renovation. Unlike the distinctive âSpelling Bee,â it exudes little real personality.  I wasnât a particular fan of the movie, to be honest, having an ingrained resistance to a) road movies, b) stories of madcap families, and c) âfeel goodâ just about anything. âLittle Miss Sunshineâ hits this trifecta, and the musical naturally employs the same GPS system, if you will.  Here again are the members of the economically stressed Hoover clan of Albuquerque, coming apart at the seams as the show opens. The familyâs nominal head, the unemployed Richard (Will Swenson), has fantasies of becoming the worldâs next self-help guru. His wife, Sheryl (Stephanie J. Block), tries to keep food on the table â even if it is just takeout fried chicken â but has begun to question whether this marriage can really endure.  Sheâs also charged with supervising her brother, Frank (Rory OâMalley), who recently attempted suicide after being dumped by his boyfriend. Grandpa (David Rasche) has an unnatural fixation on sex and drugs, and seasons the dinner table conversations with salty talk. The teenage Dwayne (Logan Rowland) hasnât spoken a word in months, and has his nose permanently buried in Nietzsche. Only little Olive (Hannah Nordberg), the would-be pageant queen with the sartorial tastes of a Williamsburg barista, seems to see rainbows everywhere. When a fluke of chance gives Olive the opportunity to compete in a California pageant, the heads west aboard a clanking van.  At the movies, a road trip can really feel like a road trip. Although the musical version sits more comfortably here than it did on the larger stage of La Jolla Playhouse, where I first saw it (with a different cast), the show canât really obscure the fact that much of it takes place in the tight confines of a moving vehicle. Still, Mr. Lapine cleverly creates the van by shifting around a suite of wheeled dining chairs. (Beowulf Boritt has designed a witty set that riffs on Google maps.)  The bigger problem is that the edges of the characters in the movie seem to have been sanded down. When they open up their interior lives in Mr. Finnâs songs, itâs as if these rough-and-rumpled people have been put through a rinse cycle with extra fabric softener.
âLittle Miss Sunshine,â a musical adaptation of the popular indie film, centers on a frazzled familyâs road trip to a childrenâs beauty pageant in California.