Indie with humor to spare is Summer's buried treasure

"Little Miss Sunshine"
Starring: Greg Kinear, Tony Collete, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, and Alan Arkin
3 and 1/2 stars out of 4


Starting with a limited release on it's plate, "Little Miss Sunshine" hoped to find an audience in the long run, it grabbed me as I enjoyed every second of it's dark wit and humor feel.

The overly problematic family, including the young cutie Olive (Breslin), who dreams of competing in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pagent, her failure of a father Richard (Kinear) who stresses winning, and the qualities of losing and or losers. The mute brother Dwyane who is following in the steps of Frederick Nietsche. The mother Sheryl (Collette) who is basically the glue that holds the family together, her suicial brother Frank played to a tee by Steve Carrell, who is also homo-sexual. Also Grandpa, played Alan Arkin who snorts heroine, and cannot stress enough to Dwyane to sleep with enough girls.

At every moment it seems the family is on the brink of a meltown, as they can't help but support eachother, or look at eachother and roll there eyes. The scene stealer Abigail Breslin is the center of the story, she idolizes her Grandpa, as he taught her all of her "moves" for the upcoming, but not possible Little Miss Sunshine contest. The family gets a call, and Olive is suddenly in. Next a roadtrip to California that will either make or break the family, as they will all be packed into a VW as transportation.

All-star acting across the board, absolutely no one missing a beat. Carrell is perfect as the emtionally out of tune brother, Collette and Kinear as the parents both looking to help there marriage along with surviving this roadtrip. Dano and Arkin are also great, this movie is just genious. Nationwide critics have praised it for it's shattering honesty and crazed road-trip humor, as the family struggles for an identity, the audience struggles to catch it's breath after laughing most of the film's short run-time.

Coming straight out of the Sundance factory, small indies like this are what brighten this downer Summer of cinema, I look forward to somehow seeing "The Illusionist" and "Half Nelson."
Some have called "Little Miss Sunshine" cliched using corkiness and dark humor to win over audiences who aren't familiar with "Garden State" and "Sideways", but this film has it's own identity and I cherished it the whole way through. It's an R rated family film that does just fine on it's own 2 emotianally detached feet.