Little Miss Sunshine is an independent film, but it’s got more than enough heart or laughs for the common viewer. Tracking a road trip with the wacky Hoover family, it takes us cross- country as they try to bring the youngest of their clan, Olive (Abigail Breslin), to Redondo Beach, where she will vie for the title of Little Miss Sunshine.

Right there, from that quick description, we’ve got two motifs that seem a little too common, especially in the indie movie setting. There are the travails of the dysfunctional American family, and there’s the road trip which brings all that to some kind of change. It would be easy to pass these over, because these two things seem a little too predictable and overdone. But the great thing about Little Miss Sunshine is that it takes the conventions of both and delivers to us something truly funny, touching, and warm.

We meet our characters, from the irritating wannabe winner of Greg Kinnear, to the Nietzsche-influenced angsty teen, to Steve Carell’s memorable turn as a suicidal gay academic. They are flawed, no doubt, and their characters have so much comic potential that on paper it seems that they are just a little too contrived. But when they start moving onscreen it’s a different matter. These are characters that through the course of the film we hate, learn to love, hate, and ultimately find that we feel towards them what we may often feel towards our own family members, and inexplicable attachment that functions at the gut level. And, by the end of the film, we would not mind getting out of our vehicle and joining them as they push their jalopy along the great American highways.

It’s the performances by the outstanding cast that brings this film to life. Each player is amazing in giving their character layers, things to like and dislike, but ultimately make them human. And here we’ve got to also credit the smart writing of Michael Arndt. This is his first produced screenplay, but the way that the dialogue rolls and the situations in the story unfold, it seems like this is an extremely promising start. Also, this is the first feature film directed by couple Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. They have an impressive background in music videos. But here they veer away from any of those kinds of stylistics and opt to downplay the camerawork. They let the script and actors do their part, but have just the right amount of control and sense of timing to enhance everything.

The movie ends, inevitably, with a dash of just too much sunshine. You can’t blame it, though, things seem so earned by then, and when it’s time to start dancing, no matter how goofy things get, how much you may want to squirm in your seat, there is still that overwhelming sense that there is something good happening here. There is much good happening in Little Miss Sunshine, and though it looks to be a quiet release that will be mostly passed over, it is no doubt one of the smartest, freshest, and most heart-warming films to come around this year.