PARTLY SUNNY

Little Miss Sunshine
Grade: B-

A crowd favorite at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Little Miss Sunshine has so much going for it that it's hard to figure out why it's such an underwhelming viewing experience. Despite terrific performances and some genuinely hilarious slapstick, the film ultimately disappoints because it tries sooooo hard to be eccentric that it exhausts itself and surrenders to total predictability by the time it crosses the finish line. Co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris follow several days in the life of a nutty Albuqurque family that hops in an old yellow VW bus and drives to California so the 7-year-old daughter can act like a JonBenet Ramsay girly whore in a beauty pageant.

All the actors give it their best shot, with especially memorable performances from Alan Arkin as the perverted grandfather and a bearded Steve Carell as a gay suicidal Proust scholar. But in the end it all stinks of superficiality because Dayton and Faris are far more interested in magnifying the characters' cartoonish quirks than exploring more subtle aspects of their personalities.

I get the feeling that we're supposed to feel like we're part of the family by the time the sappy conclusion rolls around. I, for one, was happy to see the VW bus drive off into the distance without me on it.