Little Miss Sunshine: Rating: 4 stars

A dysfunctional family embarks on a wacky road trip to enter their ugly-duckling daughter in a beauty pageant.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
2006 · R · Comedy
Reviewed January 6, 2007

No, it’s not as bad as that summary makes it sound. In fact, it’s a dark and witty comedy which knows how to walk the fine line between amusingly quirky and overdone slapstick. A good deal of this has to do with the perfectly-picked cast; Robin Williams or Steve Martin would have chewed the excellent script to shreds, but Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear keep it deadpan and tongue-in-cheek. (Oh, and huge props to Abigail Breslin, who is one of the best child actors in America today.) I’d heard the ending was a bit too “feel-good” to dovetail well with the rest of the film, but I thought it fit nicely with the misfit theme. Definitely worth watching… hell, it’s even worth buying.