Great blend of comedy and life lessons

Rating: 9/10 (23 January 2007)

It's very hard to try and make a comedy that also has some morals to it without it being to cornball. Little Miss Sunshine proves that it can be done.
An excellent ensemble cast of Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, and Little Miss Abigail Breslin. A colorful cast of characters makes up a family that decides to travel cross-country in a crappy VW bus to enter little Olive(Breslin) into a beauty pageant. Every character has their own demons. The Uncle (Carell) is just out of hospital after attempting suicide. The father (Kinnear) is a motivational speaker who is obsessed with "winning" at life. The mother (Collette) is caught in the middle, trying to keep everything together. The grandfather (Arkin) is a druggie, foul-mouthed talent coach for Olive. There's also the speechless son (Paul Dano) who has decided not to speak at all until he gets into the air force. Then there's little Olive, determined to get to her beauty pageant but caught in the middle of deciding whether she wants to be a model and follow her father's obsessive winning attitude or just be a normal kid.
What Little Miss Sunshine does so well is that it is able to give us humor in the predicament all these characters are in, because of the extreme opposites some of them are but yet its able to spread a positive message on the importance of family and being a good person. Sometimes its good to take a step back and not take ourselves so seriously. And yet, the film doesn't go out of its way to give you a good morale at the expense of taking away from the hilarious story line.
Definitely one of the most enjoyable films I have seen this past movie year.