Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American tragicomedy road film directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (in their directorial debut) from a screenplay written by Michael Arndt. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, all of whom play members of a dysfunctional family taking the youngest (Breslin) to compete in a child beauty pageant. Abigail Breslin's breakout performance in the film earned her an Academy Award nomination. The film tackles themes of family, depression, self-acceptance, and finding meaning in absurd conditions. It was produced by Big Beach Films on a budget of US$8 million. Filming began on June 6, 2005, and took place over 30 days in Arizona and Southern California.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2006, and its distribution rights were bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures for one of the biggest deals made in the history of the festival. The film had a limited release in the United States on July 26, 2006, and expanded to a wider release starting on August 18.

Little Miss Sunshine was a box office success, earning $101 million. It garnered critical praise for its performances, as well as for its directing, screenplay and humor. It earned four nominations at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Arndt and Arkin won Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, respectively, and Breslin was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. It also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, and received numerous other accolades.

Sheryl Hoover is a mother of two living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her husband Richard is an aspiring motivational speaker and life coach. Dwayne, Sheryl's Nietzsche-reading teenage son from a previous marriage, has taken a vow of silence until he accomplishes his dream of becoming a fighter pilot. Sheryl's older brother Frank, a gay scholar of Proust, is living with the family after having attempted suicide. Richard's profane father Edwin is also living with the family after being evicted from a retirement home for snorting heroin. Olive, Richard and Sheryl's young daughter, is an aspiring beauty queen coached by Edwin.

Olive learns she has qualified for the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant being held in Redondo Beach, California, in two days. Richard, Sheryl, and Edwin want to support her, and Frank and Dwayne cannot be left alone, so the whole family attends. Due to financial constraints, they go on an 800-mile (1,300 km) road trip in their yellow Volkswagen van. Family tensions play out along the way, amidst the aging van's mechanical problems. When the van breaks down early on, the family learns that they must push it until it is moving at about 20 mph (32 km/h) before it is put into gear, at which point they have to run up to the side door and jump in. Later on, the van's horn starts honking unceasingly by itself, which leads to the family being pulled over by a state trooper.

Throughout the trip, the family suffers numerous personal setbacks and discovers their need for each other's support. Richard loses an important contract that would have jump-started his motivational business. Frank embarrassingly encounters the ex-boyfriend who, in leaving him for an academic rival, had prompted his suicide attempt. Edwin fatally overdoses on heroin. When the grief counselor refuses to let the family leave his corpse at the hospital while they go to the pageant and return later, they smuggle it into the van, almost getting caught by the police. During the final leg of the trip, Dwayne discovers he is colorblind, meaning he cannot become a pilot. This revelation prompts him to finally break his silence and shout his disdain for his family, though he apologizes after Olive calms him with a hug.

After a frantic race against the clock, with the body beginning to stink in the back, the family arrives at the pageant hotel. Sheryl prepares Olive for her performance while Richard is looking into arrangements for Edwin's body. As the pageant begins, Richard and Dwayne realize that the other contestants are slim, sexualized pre-teen girls who perform elaborate dance numbers with great panache. Knowing that the amateur Olive is certain to be humiliated, they try to talk her out of performing. Sheryl insists that they "let Olive be Olive", and Olive goes on stage.

The hitherto-unseen dance routine Edwin had taught Olive is revealed to be a striptease performed to the Rocasound remix of Rick James' "Super Freak". Olive's performance horrifies and angers most of the audience and organizers, who demand she be removed from the stage. However, before they can do so the members of the Hoover family join Olive on stage and dance alongside her to show their support.