Nobody does 'road trip' movies better than the Americans and Little Miss Sunshine doesn't disappoint. Winner of both the audience and critics' awards at last year's Sundance Festival, the film follows the dysfunctional Hoover family on a journey from Alberquerque to California for the eponymous Little Miss Sunshine competition.Driving their clapped out Beetle van, is head of the Hoover clan, Richard, a motivational speaker whose nine-step program nobody wants. Also along for the ride are Mom (memorably played by Toni Collette), her suicidal brother, Frank, teenage son and Nietszche-obssessive Dwayne, gangly, awkward daughter Olive - whose success in the regional heats of the strange, only-in-America pre-teen beauty pageant prompts the journey in the first place - and Grandpa, a potty-mouthed, heroin-snorting OAP with attitude played brilliantly by Alan Arkin.
Beautifully filmed and edited, Little Miss Sunshine is a wonderful piece of film-making, poignant and achingly sad without being cloying. It is also laugh out loud funny in places and deals sympathetically with its characters. The film is a journey in every sense - the road trip has always been something of a metaphor for American audiences from the early westerns through to films like Two Lane Blacktop in the 70s via the Beats - and I am not giving too much away to say that we're with the Hoovers right through to the end.
Little Miss Sunshine is a film that restores your faith in the intelligence of American film-making.
Mr Mudd
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