A Road trip dramedy that is funny, charming, sad and very, very well done.

Rating: 10/10 (14 January 2013)

A dysfunctional family (Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin) take a ride from Albuquerque to California to take Olive (Abigail Breslin) to a beauty pageant she has been excited to participate in. In the trip they will go through some hardships, mostly personal to each person, and in the trip they learn a little something about themselves, family and life itself.
Little Miss Sunshine was a very well done movie. No time was wasted, and every scene was important in some way. It develops it's characters and story in a smooth pace without anything feeling too forceful or out of place. Sure there are strange moments, but it works well because the family itself is strange.
The characters are all interesting, and fun to be with. The acting is very good, everybody looking natural and feeling very real. My favorite character being The heroin using grandfather played by Alan Arkin mostly cause he made me laugh so much.
The only real issue that i think people might find is that by the end of the film, whatever problems they might have had or gotten into during the trip, whether they are personal or physical ones are still there. There is no resolution to many things and the end of the film might feel like it doesn't have a proper ending.
I mention this was the only thing stopping me from giving it a 10 out of 10, but as i thought about it i realized that the movie never meant to resolve these issues. that is not the goal of the film. This movie was more about the trip than the destination. It was about finding happiness or comfort in the small things, and pushing forward even when things seem bad. And that even if pushing forward doesn't fix or resolve the problem, it doesn't matter, because you learn by experiencing, enjoying the small things on the way and just moving on, not giving up.