Little Miss Sunshine

Grade: B+

A jammed clutch, stuck horn, faulty door, some farcical missteps and unresolved storylines only occasionally undermine this quirky, funny and often quite touching indie about an oddball family crammed a little too close for comfort while traveling together across country in a dilapidated van.

The family bickers and bitches incessantly. They belittle one another and don’t particularly like each other very much. Anger, resentment, contempt, judgment and misery are never far beneath the surface. Getting through a chicken in a bucket take-out dinner seems a nightly uphill ritual. Yet they are a family, and their unspoken commitment to each other is palpable, and their love for one another expresses itself in the most unexpected, comical, goofball, sensitive and forceful ways. When the youngest gets the “runner up” opportunity to compete in a beauty contest, the family’s coming together is less a plot convention than a natural extension of who they are to one another, warts and all.

What’s good here is quite wonderful, including a superb ensemble cast and a perceptive understanding about the nature of family. Toni Collete is the matriarchal glue, simultaneously sympathetic and exasperated by the collection of walking wounded in her midst, Greg Kinnear annoyingly bravado as a failed loser trying to teach others how to win. Steve Carrell is introspectively dignified as a man whose recent suicide attempt doesn’t prevent him from being one of the sanest members of the household, Alan Arkin tender and outrageous as a potty mouthed, drug snorting senior citizen, and Paul Dano refuses to speak but manages some of the funniest one-liners ever written on a spiral pad – he also expresses some long-repressed anguish and frustration with a modern day howl worthy of “King Lear.” At the center is Abigail Breslin, a child actor who never for a second irritates, can’t help but ingratiate, and exudes a natural energy that makes us feel like we’re watching a super 8 home movie even when the insanity jumps the shark or the shtickiness drives over the cliff.

The plot veers into some “National Lampoon’s Vacation” territory that belittles the story’s more authentic moments (buzzards, anyone?), a few scenes border on the implausible (a jilted man bumping into his obsession by happenstance) or the immaterial (a business venture gone asunder ending in meaningless confrontation), and the film stops rather than ends, leaving important storylines hanging without closure. But what is funny is very funny, what feels real feels very real, and a very small movie has a very big heart.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0449059/