Funniest movie since Animal House

Rating: 10/10 (20 August 2006)

Little Miss Sunshine is the funniest movie in years. Led by heroin snorting patriarch, Alan Arkin, and Mr. "Winner", Greg Kinnear, this is the penultimate dysfunctional family. Toni Collette, who has been in some magnificent movies, The 6th Sense, 8 1/2 Women, Emma and Muriel's Wedding, radiates here as the somewhat befuddled wife who ends up as a constant catalyst. Steve Carell plays her suicidal brother, and he underplays the role to a hysterical perfection. He knows that he is/was an important scholar, but he's not sure that anybody else knows, or cares. Kinnear, fresh off of the masterful, The Matador, is quietly becoming one of America's best character actors. The two kids are strange, strangely likable and yet indicative of today's children. Forced to travel together for two days and 800 miles in an old VW bus, the family quickly unravels and then, when forced to look closely at one another, realizes in the end...all you really need is family. If you have any appreciation of humor, don't miss this one.