Fun, absolutely entertaining, has a lot of delightfully strange characters.

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2020)

It is rare to find a comedy as well done and interesting as this one. Generally, horror and comedy are the poor relatives of cinema, as they are usually low-cost productions of questionable quality. In this case, the film breathes quality. The script is extremely simple and based on an interstate trip that a very crazy family has to make so that Olive, the youngest of the clan, can participate in a child beauty contest that she loves.
Comedy mostly depends on the unusual situations that the characters go through on their journey, which looks like an odyssey. And everything happens here, from problems with the van to a death. The movie may not even make us laugh out loud and it certainly won't, most of the time... but it will make us laugh. As important as the good construction of the comic scenes is the way the characters were thought and developed. And here the script was great: the family man is a motivational therapist who is terrible at what he does; the mother is honest, sincere, dedicated, but she is completely lost and desperate. Then there is the gay uncle who is a Proust fanatic and attempted suicide after being abandoned by his boyfriend, the older brother who is a enraged teen who hates everything and everyone, the brazen and perverse grandfather that no nursing home accepts and finally the sweet and gentle Olive. Oh, and we still have the yellow and white VW Type 2 van, which causes so many problems throughout the trip that it almost ends up becoming an addition to the cast.
The actors were excellent and everyone put in a lot of effort. From the cast, where I immediately notice notable names, I would particularly highlight the excellent work of Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Toni Collette and Alan Arkin. Abigail Breslin, for me, is on another level. The film is truly hers. She is the protagonist, and she has done such a good job for a child actress that it is difficult to imagine that she will not have an excellent career in cinema if she continues to strive. Something that deserves some attention in this film are the dialogues and the lines. Despite the regular use of heavy words, the dialogues have real pearls, worthy of quote.
The film won two Oscars (Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, for Alan Arkin), but was still nominated in the categories of Best Film and Best Supporting Actress (for Abigail Breslin, although she is the main actress in this film, I think ). It is a film that, in addition to everything I have mentioned, has very regular sets and costumes and also a decent cinematography, despite not being, notoriously, a film that draws attention by the production values.