I'm probably a little late to the game, but I watched Little Miss Sunshine over the weekend and it's one of the best films I've seen in some time. Beautiful, charming, dark, funny, and gorgeously filmed, it's well-worth a watch.

The movie is filled with stereotypical dysfunctional family characters: the hard-charging, Type-A, insensitive father; the vulgar grandfather; the wise and gentle but suicidally depressed uncle; the silent and tortured emo boy; the precociously cute little girl; and the harried mother trying to hold it all together. The plot revolves around this cast of characters travelling several hundred miles in their antiquated yellow VW bus to get the daughter to a beauty contest in California.

The VW serves as a sort of metaphor for the family: malfunctioning and falling apart; but ultimately kept going by everybody joining together and working as a team. The film ends on a note of bizarre but joyful hope and redemption, with lots of oddball moments along the way that will keep you crying or laughing.

I won't say any more. If you haven't seen it, watch it.

Caveat: lots of language and a couple moments of pornography (shots of magazines). If you're bothered by either or both, you might want to give it a pass.