Little Miss Sunshine is a sophisticated black comedy about a dysfunctional family who embark on a journey across America to take part in a beauty pageant.
The film is an uplifting tale about a family struggling to get through everyday life and striving to reach their dreams.
The audience is eased into the storyline and introduced to the characters at a family dinner around the table, and it is here that it becomes apparent how brilliantly the film is cast.
The plot explores an unusual family but is dotted with ordinary family themes and issues, and some rather dramatic problems.
Abigail Breslin plays Olive, a young and innocent girl who dreams of being a beauty queen but isn't the typical pageant participant wearing a face-full of makeup and sporting a fake tan.
Greg Kinnear takes on the role of the father, Richard Hoover, an over-achieving businessman obsessed with winning and being the best.
Toni Collette is Sheryl Hoover, the mother and wife, and a pillar of normality in a film filled with eccentric and exaggerated characters. She plays a busy and stressed mother struggling to balance work, running a home and getting the best for her children.
Paul Dano plays Dwayne, an awkward and emo teenager who has made a vow of silence and also dreams big, committed to becoming a pilot.
Steve Carrell was a pleasant surprise in Little Miss Sunshine as he stepped away from his usual empty and forced comedy roles in forgettable Hollywood churn-outs. He plays Sheryl's complex and disturbed brother, Frank Ginsberg, recently released from hospital having attempted suicide.
And Alan Arkin plays grandpa Edwin Hoover, a grumpy but dedicated war-veteran father and grandfather with a cocaine problem.
This dark comedy has moments of laugh-out-loud humour entwined with dark themes of suicide and drug abuse.
The story follows the family as they race across America to reach the Little Miss Sunshine pageant on time. But the journey is fraught with obstacles as the Hoover's must overcome their faulty campervan, deal with job and money problems, and face the bereavement of grandpa Edwin, as well as Dwayne's heartbreak at the discovery he is colourblind meaning he cannot fulfil his dream of flying.
But it is these dramas which bring the family together in this uplifting and warm tale as the Hoovers realise the important things in life and rally together during the finale at the pageant. The family is bought together by an inappropriate dance to 'Superfreak'.
The family's descent into madness comes to a happy ending as the Sheryl and Richard reconnect, Frank finds happiness and solitude with his extended family, Olive receives the support and love of her family at the pageant and Dwayne rediscovers his voice and insightfully says: 'Life is one beauty contest after another.. you do what you love and fuck the rest."
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