Shows the edgy and sweet side of family life

Rating: Null/10 (20 August 2006)

The first third of the film is very difficult to watch. The Hoover family is a Norman Rockwell tableau from Bizarro-land. Each member of the family in Albuquerque, NM, is wildly idiosyncratic. There is fun in the dysfunction with a lot of black humor.
The father is the creator of a "Nine-Point Plan" for success where there are only winners and losers. He's waiting manically for a call from an agent at a convention in Scottdale who is pitching the plan.
His father is a sex-obsessed, heroin-snorting senior who seems to say whatever comes to mind.
Their teenage son refuses to speak, but says much in short, heavy-handed writing like "I hate everyone" and "Welcome to hell." He has his nose in Nietchze's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" for most of the movie.
The mother's brother is an unemployed Proust scholar with bandages on his wrists from a recent suicide attempt after being spurned by a male graduate student who hooked up with a rival. Steve Carell is outstanding.
The mother is an enabler who pretends everything is okay and tries to keep the family functioning.
The only light comes from the unsinkable bespectacled,precocious daughter whose optimism and love doesn't quit. She brings out the best in her cynical grandfather and everyone else. Abagail Breslin, a newcomer, gives a memorable performance.
Somehow Olive manages to come in as first runner-up in a girls' beauty contest while visiting her mother's sister. She's been spending a lot of time with Grandpa working on a new number for a future contest. Then the fateful call comes: the first-place winner has been disqualified, and Olive is being invited to compete in the finals in Redondo Beach, CA. After weighing the options, the parents decide that the only way they are going to go there is to drive. Dad's old yellow VW bus (without head rests or seat belts) is pressed into service on I-10 for the 700-mile trip. Despite their own personal agendas, they are devoted to Olive and her dream.
The trip is also a voyage into the psyche of each of them. The brother and the father are thrown into despair, but Olive in her unassuming way helps them hold on with her innocent love.
They make it five minutes late to the pageant. After falling on his knees, the father manages to get the ice-queen director to let the daughter register. The story builds to a climax in this world of preternatural sex kittens. The brother and uncle beg the mother to keep Olive from competing, but the decision falls to Olive.
In the end, it is love and loyalty that redeems this family. They committed to be part of this yellow VW Noah's Ark out of devotion to Olive. By the end of the first leg of the trip, they have been transformed. The return trip should be at lot more peaceful.
There are some real shortcomings in the premises that take a lot of suspension of belief. As a former VW bus owner, I know the mechanical details are not plausible. The VW bus' transmission fails, so the father is advised to get the bus rolling up to 20 mph so he can shift into 3rd gear. There are many laughs as the family members run and push and then jump into the side opening, but clearly the van is not moving faster than 5 mph. Then the script departs from verisimilitude when the father has to deal with a funeral home in California that is nothing close to reality. It couldn't have happened in one afternoon to make a report, get clearance of the medical examiner, and complete a cremation and have the ashes returned. I'm not carping, tho, the depth of human interactions makes up for these shortcomings.