Imperfect but sweetly quirky and enjoyable (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2007)

Olive's family is kindly described as dysfunctional. Her father Richard aspires to be an inspiration speaker and writer with his "nine steps to success" programme. Her brother Dwayne has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his goal of being a pilot. Her uncle Frank is staying with them because he has tried to kill himself after personal and professional issues. Her grandfather has been kicked out of his nursing home for heroin use and now lives with them. Olive herself has the ambition to succeed in beauty contests and her ambition appears to be close to fulfilment when the winner of a contest is dethroned, making Olive the winner and the entrant into a regional competition happening this weekend. With few options, the whole family board their VW camper van and head out on the road.
Regardless of the hype the basic plot summary made it sound like a car crash waiting to happen. I wonder, will lessons be learnt and family barriers broken down during the road trip? Of course this occurs but the quirky sweetness is both the making of it and the breaking of it. On one level the film works so well because it manages to avoid the emotional traps of the clichés in the script by being so very different in its approach. This is true of the characters, the plot and the conclusion, all of them having a semblance of the cliché but yet developing along some sort of quirky parallel path. The downside of this is that at times it goes too far. Personally for me this was the actions immediately following the death of the grandfather  I found them too extreme and unlikely and the quirk factor was pushed too high.
As it was though, the sweet quirkiness turned this around after a short time and we were back on level ground. It isn't a perfect film by any means but this approach did help make it so much more that it could have been (imagine the exact same plot delivered as a daytime melodrama to see what I mean about the importance of the tone and approach). The direction is good, again feeding the quirky indie feel with the music and framing of shots. The cast work well because mostly they manage to fit with the quirky approach but not totally lose their characters in there. Breslin is a wonderful little girl, effortlessly real and sweet but not in the sickly, precocious way that some can be. In terms of performances, the adult cast do dominate her though as they deliver more. I enjoyed the way that Kinnear and Collette worked off one another as the couple and they, rather than Olive, provided a lot of the heart of the film. Carell was not a total revelation but he wasn't far off  it is the first serious role I have seen him do and he did it very well. Dano is moody for the most but delivers when it is asked of him, while Arkin is a terrific character that brought a lot of humour to the film.
Overall it is perhaps too quirky for its own good and it does really skate a fine line. Mostly though it works and the quirky sweetness (assuming you are into it) does carry it though the moments where it pushes the boundary of quirky and threatens to become silly or quirky for its own sake. Not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination and I do feel it has been hyped more than it deserves but regardless it is charming and enjoyably disarming.