"Little Miss Sunshine": This bumpy ride is worth the trip

"Welcome to Hell," teenage Dwayne (Paul Dano) writes on his notepad. He's about to embark on a road trip with his family, in a sunshine-yellow VW bus. In lead boots, they're chasing a dream.

"Little Miss Sunshine" is a dysfunctional-family road movie that takes a few wrong turns, but is possessed of a heart so warm you forgive it readily. Co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris have pulled off the essential ingredient for this kind of film: a cast that believably creates a family. Not that the oddball Hoovers are any kind of advertisement for togetherness: As the film begins, they're all zooming around in separate orbits, barely connecting.

Movie review

Showtimes and trailer

"Little Miss Sunshine," with Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin. Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, from a screenplay by Michael Arndt. 101 minutes. Rated R for language, some sex and drug content. Guild 45th, Pacific Place.

Dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) is struggling with his failing nine-step-program business; he barely notices the family, except to give them axioms like "Luck is the name losers give to their own failings." Dwayne obsesses over Nietzsche and scribbles on his pad, refusing to speak to his family; Olive (Abigail Breslin) watches beauty pageants with a scary intensity, staring fixedly through her round glasses. Grandpa (Alan Arkin), recently kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin (his defense: "I'm old!"), complains about the meals. Uncle Frank (a hilariously sad-eyed Steve Carell), a Proust scholar recovering from a suicide attempt, wafts around the messy house, seemingly in disbelief at his arrival there. And mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) brings home buckets of chicken and bushels of forced cheer, doing her best to keep everyone going.

Once they hit the road, headed to California so that Olive can participate in a child beauty pageant, the movie gets going, and the actors make it all their own: The Hoovers are on a date with destiny, which everyone but Olive seems to know is doomed. Michael Arndt's screenplay sketches out the characters nicely, with each having moments that define them. The cranky grandfather, who doesn't seem to have a sentimental bone in his body, tells Olive sincerely that she's the most beautiful girl in the world. And there's an exchange between the kids, involving only a quiet "OK," that says everything about siblings and their bond. "Little Miss Sunshine," for all its black humor, comes down strongly on the side of family and love.

The pageant, when we finally get there, threatens to topple the film just a bit; there's a whiff of mockery against the contestants (who are all, except Breslin, real-life pageant kids offscreen) that feels uncomfortable and unnecessary. But it's filled with funny moments (an officious pageant lady, not wanting to deal with the tardy Hoovers, huffs "I have a hair check to do"), and its finale, though not entirely believable, is a charmer. Everyone ends this road trip happily, including the audience.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2783 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com