Exploring depression, hope, mental health and wellbeing, with a good dose of humor thrown in, this road movie of family dysfunction sees an increasingly desperate father lead his eccentric family on a road trip across the States to help their young daughter achieve her dream of becoming a beauty queen.

Father Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) is desperately trying to sell his motivational success program... with no success. Meanwhile, ‘pro-honesty’ mum Sheryl (Toni Collette) lends support to her unconventional family, including her depressed brother (Steve Carell), fresh out of the hospital after being jilted by his lover. Then there are the younger Hoovers - the seven-year-old, would-be beauty queen Olive (Abigail Breslin) and Dwayne (Paul Dano), a Nietzsche-reading teen who has taken a vow of silence. Topping off the lot is the foul-mouthed grandfather (Alan Arkin), whose outrageous behavior has recently got him evicted from his retirement home. So when Olive is invited to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in far-off California, the family piles aboard their rusted-out VW bus to rally behind her - with riotously funny results.

A gentle family satire and a classic American road movie, Little Miss Sunshine harks back to the anti-establishment, countercultural comedies of the 70s like Smile or Harold and Maude - a satirical fairytale that takes delight in preaching the virtues of non-conformity over the superficiality of conventional American values.

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