By film's end, the moral is simple and clear: no matter your troubles, family can help one overcome all broken hopes and delicate fears, with the love only a family can give.

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2006)

Little Miss Sunshine is the kind of movie that sticks with you long after it's over. It arouses every smidgen of happiness within you, causing an incessant smirk that never cramps. The sharply-written script by first-time writer Michael Arndt brings a literal meaning to the term "laugh-out-loud funny," and mixes wonderfully with Dayton's vision. Never before have I seen a film that had me laughing so relentlessly and wanting to cry at the same time. Beneath the dark and raunchy, sometimes crude humor of Sunshine, awaits a heart-warming treasure of a story, offered with smiles to those who see through to it. There are no standout performances here, though each is precisely portrayed and is done so necessarily. Steve Carell comes out of his short-lived goofy-funny character typecast to deliver the only suiting performance as Frank, the suicidal genius uncle, who so happens to be gay as well. Little Olive is as cute and lovable as any character in recent years and Collette and Kinnear pass well as the feuding parents. Dwayne, Olive's older brother, played lawfully by The Girl Next Door's Paul Dano, is an anger-ridden teen who has pledged a vow of silence until he's achieved his goal of becoming an Air Force test pilot. The funniest, and most vulgar, moments, however, come by way of the foul-mouthed Grandpa, who moved in with his son and daughter-in-law after being kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin. This bundle of misfits we know as the Hoover family travel cross-country to enter Olive in a pre-pubescent beauty pageant called Little Miss Sunshine, though on the way are plagued by hilarious misfortune and tragic loss. By film's end, the moral is simple and clear: no matter your troubles, family - even the weirdos that construct the Hoovers - can help one overcome all broken hopes and delicate fears, with the love only a family can give.