Little Miss Sunshine

Because it got such good reviews, I thought I'd be disappointed, but actually I really enjoyed it and strongly recommend it. Little Miss Sunshine is a sweet, subversive little movie. It's about a family of heroic "losers" on their way to a mini-Miss America pageant. That the grandfather in the film is played by the inimitable Alan Arkin, who should delight us forever with his adorable crankiness, is a good indication that the heart of the movie is in the right place. Little Miss Sunshine is a road movie with a VW van that barely works, a father, wonderfully played in all his optimistic, pathetic obtuseness by Greg Kinnear, his long-suffering wife, Toni Collette, excellent as usual, the ever surprising Steve Carell as the suicidal world's number one Proust scholar, Paul Dano as a Nietzsche teen freak on a vow of silence and the lovely, talented child actor Abigail Breslin as the Little Miss Sunshine contender. The movie builds up to a magnificent finale of American grotesquerie that is biting and true and gleefully perverse. It is a conventional comedy about highly individual, unconventional people who triumph in all their flawed, vulnerable, weird glory. Very well written, wonderfully directed, very delightful and one of the best American movies I have seen this year (which is not saying much, but there you have it). The only other one I can think about is United 93.