The feature debut of music-video veterans Jonathan Dayton and his wife Valerie Faris was put together on the "quirky" assembly line, a product of the thriving "quirky" industry. Dad (Greg Kinnear) is a would-be self-help guru, "would-be," that is, if anyone were buying his Nine-Step Refuse-to-Lose System. Sample pearl, in casual conversation: "Sarcasm is the refuge of losers." Mom (Toni Collette) is not such an arrant embarrassment, is not really much of anything, except that she has taken responsibility for and custody of her homosexual brother (Steve Carell), a failed suicide and the self-professed, as opposed to acknowledged, "pre-eminent Proust scholar in the United States." Dad's dad (Alan Arkin), who resides in the same household, is a scurrilous cokehead. And the kids are a Nietzsche-reading teenage boy (Paul Dano) who has held fast to a vow of silence for nine months, though he is not averse to communication via notepad ("I hate everyone"), and an owlishly bespectacled younger sister (Abigail Breslin) in competition for the crown of Little Miss Sunshine in Redondo Beach. Since the family lives in Albuquerque, a road movie ensues, with all members of the family packed into a yellow-and-white VW bus. You wait with dread for the moment that will cause the boy to break his silence, and even greater dread for the first public performance of the girl's "talent" as nurtured in secret by Granddad; and the dread in each case proves fully justified. Quirkiness does not preclude sappiness. There are ample compensations, however. Little Miss Breslin is a good crier, and her competitors in the beauty pageant are a frightening collection of JonBenét Ramsey plastic dolls, and the bus itself emerges as the best character, requiring a collective push after the clutch goes out en route, and emitting a rude-sounding, unpredictable bleat after the horn gets stuck. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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