Sweet and funny road trip movie

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2014)

My mother had been raving about this movie for the longest time. She kept telling me "oh you have to watch it, it's so funny!" Naturally, this made my expectations rise quite a bit. Did the film deliver? Yeah, I think it did. The cast plays their roles perfectly, from Alan Arkin as the cocaine snorting grandfather to Steve Carrell as the gay, suicidal uncle. The script manages to be consistently funny and be very touching. I always welcome that in a comedy. It's themes of family and giving it your all are evident while being subtle, thankfully (I hate it when they beat you over the head with messages). Only problem I had was a nitpick. Their car breaks down and the mechanic tells them they get get the thing running by getting the car to go at least 20 MPH. Okay, fine. How do they achieve this? By pushing it wait that's stupid, but nonetheless it works. That's my only complaint and when everything worked as well as it did, I can forgive that.