Just ignore Sundance

Beware of Sundance buzz movies. "Happy, Texas." "The Spitfire Grill." " Pieces of April." All of these movies won acclaim, audience adoration and buzz in the high altitude of Park City. But released in the real world, they opened to audience apathy and lukewarm (at best) reviews.

Did you hear "Little Miss Sunshine" was all the buzz at Sundance? Well, it's a strange hybrid of two of those aforementioned titles. We've got a dysfunctional family on a road trip ala "Pieces of April." And we've got slapstick and kiddie beauty pageants ala "Happy, Texas."

Toni Collete and Greg Kinnear play a couple with a nerdy daughter who wants to be in a beauty pageant. Through contrived plot-twisting, they head out in a rickety van with Colette's teenage son, her suicidal brother and Kinnear's dad so little Olive can follow her dream. The movie careens from physical comedy to supposedly tender emotional moments.

Alan Arkin does his usual loud old guy with a potty mouth (the indie movie equivalent to the sitcom's sassy six year-old.) Toni Collette, who I usually love, cannot seem to convince me that she has any connection to Kinnear. But it's Kinnear who gets the LVP. The whole shebang might have worked if could pull off his part. His character, Richard, has a self-empowerment plan that he wants to franchise into books, videos and audiotapes. The only problem is he's unemployed and no one takes him seriously. Kinnear plays him broad and smiling with no undercurrents. He can't seem to understand this guy or accept that maybe Richard isn't just a buffoon. The script needed to give him something more to do than make fun of how stupid people are who believe in self-empowerment. It's too easy a target.

And talk about an easy target: the final scenes at the pageant are the usual "aren't these children and parents freaks" bit that they used in "Happy, Texas," a Bravo reality show and thousands of segments on 20/20 after the whole Jon-Benet tragedy.

It's a tired, ramshackle movie that thinks it reaches emotional truths.

A few caveats to that:

Steve Carell manages to deliver his every line in just the right tone (he can even say "far out" and make you smile) and Paul Dano finds new depths as a mopey teenager.

If you really want a "dysfunctional family piles into the car on a mission" movie, rent "The Daytrippers." It's a truly funny and truly emotionally wrenching little comedy.

Hey, I LIKED Pieces of April, Happy Texas, and Spitfire Grill!

And I love Toni Collete enough to take a chance.

But you've convinced me to wait to see it at the cheapo theater.

This was a WONDERFUL movie. Your review is off on this one. Toni Collette was outstanding, and fully believable as a woman just barely holding it together as she attempts to support her loser husband and still raise her kids to be better than their parents. And Greg Kinnear very accurately captures a man giving his all for a dream even he is losing faith in. So I thoroughly disagree with you here.