Little Miss Sunshine

This is one of those As Good As it Gets and The Royal Tenenbauns movies... life is one long string of disasters, but life is full of real people. Toni Colette is wonderful in this movie, as she is in the many films she has done. There are scenes which are hilarious, and also scenes where you are not sure whether they are funny or should even be considered funny - the final beauty pageant fiasco, for example, but if you think hard about it, the shock nature of the stage show is only making explicit what is underlining the whole idea of such performances. Anyway, the film's beauty is that none of the characters are beautiful. A road movie with a difference (and a yellow VW camper van), and whilst it pretends to be serious at times it is mainly just fun light relief.