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'Little Miss Sunshine' is smart, goofy, tender... and funny

"Little Miss Sunshine" is one of those out-of-the-blue gems you don't see coming and couldn't have made up.

The setup is familiar: on the road with a dysfunctional family. But directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (a husband-wife team famous for music videos) aren't thinking "RV" or Chevy Chase. They're aiming more for the complex humor and bittersweet tone of the Thanksgiving-themed "Pieces of April." Their film isn't quite as good — a miscalculation at the very end knocks it down a notch — but it offers a similarly rich ensemble cast and character-driven comedy.

Fox Searchlight Pictures 'Little Miss Sunshine' B+ The verdict: Superb ensemble comedy is sunny one moment, somewhat darker the next. A don't-miss. Directors: Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton Cast: Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin Run time: 99 minutes Release date: July 26, 2006 Rating: R for language, some sex and drug content. See showtimes Meet the directors This low-budget indie was a movie directing debut for the husband-and-wife team. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Seven-year-old Olive (truly adorable Abigail Breslin) is a beauty-pageant junkie who compulsively watches an old Miss America tape over and over so she can study Miss Kansas' reaction when Regis Philbin reads her name as the winner. Little Olive isn't really the Miss Anything type; she's chubby, wears owlish oversize glasses, and her fashion sense tends toward dinosaur T-shirts with red cowboy boots.

But she makes up for her atypicality with sheer oblivious gumption and an unshakable belief in herself. So when a lucky fluke — Little Miss Chili Pepper can't fulfill her duties, and Olive was the first runner-up — makes her a finalist in the Little Miss Sunshine contest in California, she begs her parents (Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette) to let her go.

Kinnear's Richard is a failed motivational speaker whose nine-step Refuse-to-Lose program includes tips such as, "Step 4: Sarcasm is the refuge of losers." Wife Sheryl is the sort of straight shooter who despairs of Richard ever finding someone who thinks Refuse-to-Lose is a winning idea. (Finances are getting tight and some of the confrontations between the two are genuinely disturbing, part of what gives the comedy resonance and weight.)

Joining them in their vintage VW bus are Olive's older brother, Nietzsche nut Dwayne (Paul Dano), who for the past nine months has used a notepad to communicate; Grandpa (Alan Arkin), who was just kicked out of his nursing home for shooting heroin in his room; and Sheryl's brother, Frank (Steve Carell), the world's foremost Proust scholar who recently tried to commit suicide because his boyfriend ran off with a hated rival. That would be the world's second-most knowledgeable Proust expert, who's just published an acclaimed book ... on Proust.

As someone said, the journey is more important than.... Their road trip is a hilariously bumpy ride, from the chaos that arises when Olive orders a waffle a la mode to the VW's failed clutch, which necessitates a kind of running start, with family members jumping aboard like a group version of "The Defiant Ones."

The pageant itself isn't quite as good. It indulges in familiar JonBenet-bashing stereotypes (though they are still funny) and a feel-good we-are-family moment that wouldn't be out of place in, well, "RV" or a Chevy Chase movie.

The cast is just about flawless. Kinnear finds the heartbreaking sweetness in poor deluded Richard while Collette once again proves that she can act with her fingertips (literally; watch her hands on the steering wheel of the VW). Dano gets laughs every time he scrawls something on his pad. Arkin, whom we see too little these days, gives nuance to a potentially one-joke role. And Premier magazine's cover boy and new king of comedy, Carell, with his neatly trimmed beard and arch manner, proves he can do a lot more than needy nice-guy geeks.

Smart and goofy, tender and laugh-out-loud funny, "Little Miss Sunshine" is the sleeper hit of the summer.