Little Miss Sunshine: A Film Nerd's Dream

Little Miss Sunshine is one of those movies that form my raison d'etre as a movie reviewer. It is filled with a film-nerd's dream cast that Hollywood would never trust to open a movie (Steve Carell notwithstanding), and it's about a quirky, snarky family in several concentric states of crisis on an extremely stressful roadtrip to certain disaster.

That said, it is hilarious. That also said, it is heartbreaking. Nearly every character has an unmanageably huge and personal tragedy befall them in some way during the course of this film, the kind of stuff that if it only happened to one person would have you walking out moaning, "And that moment when he - ohhhh!" to your companion. Yet during nearly all of the movie, the audience was laughing so hard we missed crucial bits of dialogue. You actually walk out moaning, "Oh my god I hope everyone goes to see that, I loved that movie!"

That's where I come in. Little Miss Sunshine is exactly the kind of movie you should be spending your money on this summer. (Not that I have anything against summer blockbusters…) It's chock full of interesting and eccentric characters (though I would have liked more development of Toni Collette's character) and it is immeasurably sad and funny at the same time.

The events that occur are incredibly unlikely, yet feel so real in the world set up by the filmmakers Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. Screenwriter Michael Arndt has managed an impossible alchemy of unpleasant situations and joyful feeling.

My companion, in response to the almost unbearable tension of inevitability in the climax, said that if she was "watching this in [her] house [she] would go find something else to do in another room until this scene is over." We were clutching each other as if we were in a horror film, waiting for the axe to drop, waiting for another terrible thing to befall a beloved character, but unable to peel our eyes away because it was just so beautifully done. And did I mention it's funny?

The cast is fantastic - Collette, Carell, Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin (the little girl from Signs, if anything more adorable than ever) and Paul Dano as the disaffected teenage son of Collette and Kinnear. They and the yellow VW bus you see in the poster, truly a seventh character itself, will give you a ride you won't regret.

You might hesitate when you see on IMDB.com that the married co-directors Faris and Dayton have almost exclusively music video and/or commercial experience. Then again, you might recall that the same could be said about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's director Michel Gondry. (See that review.) Those who responded to the Volkswagen Cabrio commercial with Nick Drake's song "Pink Moon," that was these guys. Little Miss Sunshine speaks like that 30-second spot.

Tell the studios that they did it right: vote with your box office money. It's hardly a summer movie, but it is one you will not regret seeing.