THEATER
• King of Shadows
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Oh What War
• Three Changes
• 4 Adults Only
FILM
• The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival
• Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived
Q&A
• 'Grey' Area
A health expert turned filmmaker makes his East Coast premiere
CULTURE VULTURE
• Culture Vulture

Little Miss Sunshine
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Review by Ethan Alter

Not since the Griswolds took their ill-fated trek to Wally World have we met a road-tripping family as dysfunctional as the Hoovers, the eccentric clan at the center of the riotous indie comedy "Little Miss Sunshine." Papa Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a wannabe self-help guru, while his wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) is the family's long-suffering breadwinner. Rounding out the tribe is Grandpa (Alan Arkin), a foul-mouthed heroin addict, Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), a depressed Proust scholar recovering from a botched suicide attempt, and teenage son Dwayne (Paul Dano) who has taken a vow of silence. The only semi-normal Hoover is adorable young daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin), who dreams of being a beauty pageant queen. Olive's fantasy suddenly seems achievable when she learns that she made the finals of the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Her family reluctantly piles into their broken-down VW minibus and makes the long trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, California. Along the way, they bicker, backtalk and, eventually, engage in some long-overdue family bonding.

Relative insanity: The Hoover family makes the rest of us look just a little more normal in the indie comedy "Little Miss Sunshine," directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.

This may sound like the set-up for a dire studio comedy or, even worse, a sitcom, but for the most part "Sunshine" manages to remain emotionally honest. An enormous amount of credit must go to its ensemble cast, who locate the realism in characters that could easily have been played as caricatures of suburban hell. The actors work so well together that it's hard to single out just one performance, but Breslin proves herself a genuine charmer as Olive, and anyone who doubts that Carell is the best comic actor working today need only to watch the scene in which Frank shows Richard what sarcasm really sounds like.

In preparation for their feature-film debut, music-video directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris must have studied Wes Anderson's oeuvre, as they employ many of the same visual devices, most notably the wide shots that emphasize the family's various environments. "Sunshine" is clearly happening in the real world. There's a particular moment where Olive asks her mother how much money they'll be able to spend before ordering breakfast at a roadside diner. Scenes like this help balance some of the more contrived portions of Michael Arndt's screenplay, including a late-inning revelation about Dwayne that seems to come out of nowhere. These hiccups aside, "Little Miss Sunshine" builds confidently to its show-stopping climax, where all of the Hoovers proudly let their freak flags fly.