Love and pain and the whole damn thing...

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2007)

"Little Miss Sunshine" is ostensibly built around a road-trip to a junior-miss pageant, yet the character-oriented film, at its core, is about dreamers--specifically dreamers who aren't successful, but who have enough drive and delusion to convince themselves otherwise. An unconventional family in New Mexico valiantly attempts to get their little girl to a pageant in Southern California, with each member of the group struggling against his or her own insecurities. Both an edgy comedy (with its foundation in manic-depressive humor) and a sentimental drama with hard-shelled pathos, it walks a fine line between exhilarating and excruciating--but the remarkable cast usually keeps it on the winning side. That said, I didn't quite buy the ending; I'm glad the film doesn't resort to cliché and turn young Abigail Breslin into a pint-sized Barbie doll, but perhaps a little more heart might have been worked in. Otherwise, a finely-tuned valentine to family neurosis, and the love inherent in pulling together as a familial unit. *** from ****