Let the Sunshine In

I’m going to tell you about Little Miss Sunshine.

Forget your mutants, returning superheroes, and swaggering pirates.

This is a darling little indie that, with its attention to detail (courtesy of husband-and-wife directing duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris), darkly touching laughs and poignant truths (from a script by Michael Arndt), and stellar acting, has more than earned its buzz.

The dysfunctional family road trip dramedy stars Abigail Breslin, a cherubic rising star who made her debut in 2002’s Signs. She plays 7-year-old Olive Hoover, a little girl with a big dream: she wants to be crowned Little Miss Sunshine.

The only problem is she lives in Albuquerque with her very dysfunctional family – her father (Greg Kinnear) is a loser of a motivational speaker, her mother (Toni Collette) is barely hanging in there, her brother (Paul Dano) is a Nietzsche aficionado who has taken a vow of silence, her gay uncle (Steve Carell) has just tried to commit suicide, and her Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit – and the beauty pageant is in Redondo Beach, Calif.

But the girl can’t help it, and neither can the Hoovers. So they set aside their own issues and band together to hit the road in a broken-down yellow VW bus to try and make Olive’s dream come true.

I think what I like best about the film is it really covers all the bases: it is funny and it is sad; it has heart and it has smarts; and it while it marches to the beat of its drum, it is quite the crowd-please.

Little Miss Sunshine is a ray of light, and I hope that you can bask in it.

My Rating ****

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures.