Little Miss Sunshine

Never judge a book by it's cover, and never judge a movie by it's title (or the DVD cover). Here is a film that fell off my radar when I first heard about it simply because of it's title. It sounded like some cutesy child-worshipping family movie. Well it is a bit cutesy and it is about a family but it's not the drivel it sounded like (to me) at all.
It's a comedy/drama that centres on a road trip that a slightly dysfunctional family makes across 2 states in a volkswagan minivan to get Olive, the young daughter to the "Little Miss Sunshine" Beauty pageant that she has qualified for. The family also consists of Richard, the father who is an aspiring but rather annoying motivational speaker. Sheryl, the mother. Dwayne, a gawky teenage son (but aren't they all), who has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of joining the Airforce. Frank, an uncle, Sheryl's brother, who is a scholar under supervision for having recently attempted suicide, and Richard's father, Edwin, a foul-mouthed WW2 vet who was kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin.
They take the road trip because they cannot afford to fly, and the whole family goes because they can't leave anyone behind. The trip has a series of setbacks starting with various mechanical faults in the vehicle that cannot be fixed in the short time that they have to get to the pageant. The way that everything goes wrong causing the family to have to employ ridiculous solutions just to keep going was both painful and amusing to watch and most of all very easy to relate to probably for all of us. When things go wrong, they all go wrong at once. I know I've felt just like that a few times this year in my transition from paid worker to poor student. Their situation is tragic yet it's also heart-warming as it pulls the family together as they have to rely on one another. Their problems don't stop there, each member has a personal setback and when they finally get to their destination they almost don't get in as they are five minutes late. I'm not going to spoil the story so I'll just say that it's a highly amusing movie and a guaranteed great night's viewing.