Little Miss Sunshine

I don't know anyone like any of the people in Little Miss Sunshine. I haven't experienced any of the experiences in the movie. But despite all of this, somehow, while watching it, I felt like I was watching home videos of my own family.

The film revolves around the family of Richard and Sheryl Hoover (Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette) of Albuquerque, NM. This includes their children Olive (Abigail Breslin) and Dwayne (Paul Dano), Richard's dad Edwin (Alan Arkin), and Sheryl's brother Frank (Steve Carell). Dwayne has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of becoming a fighter pilot. Edwin is a heroin addict. Frank is a suicidal gay Proust professor. And Olive is a semi-chubby, plain, normal child with dreams of becoming Little Miss Sunshine. The entire family takes to the road in a tempt to get Olive to California and the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant.

The quirks of this family make this movie feel real. Not some Hollywood version of what family should be, but actually a real family. The Hoover family can barely stand to be in the same room with each other, yet when the chips are down, they turn to each other. This is to me the core of what a family is. People that you don't necessarily like a lot of the time, yet you know you can turn to them. They don't necessarily make things better, but they do help in their own ways.

There are some funny moments, and some sad moments, along the way to Olive's dream. But these things only serve to illustrate how the family loves one another, even when they can't even seem to speak civilly to each other. For anyone who, like me, does not have the Beaver Cleaver model of family, I'd say this is definitely one to check out. And I'll leave you with the perfect summation of this movie, from Sheryl Hoover herself - "Whatever happens, we're family." That just about says it all.