"Little Miss Sunshine"

Oddness often attempts to pass for entertainment, sometimes even for art. And fails. Witness "Me and You and Everyone We Know."

Though "Little Miss Sunshine," which opened this weekend, is definitely odd, it's not faking anything. Sure, it's ostensibly about getting to a pre-teen beauty pageant, which is almost entirely about false fronts, the power of the film itself is in telling a hard truth: lots of people, maybe everyone, have dreams they have absolutely no hope of achieving. Yet, somehow, they all manage to wake up and see the dream that has been in front of them the whole time they were striving for other goals.

Everyone in this film has a dream: seven-year old Olive's dream is to win the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. Her father has a self-help program he wants to see published. Her stepbrother Dwayne (who reads nothing but Nietzsche and has taken vow of silence until he reaches his goal) wants to go to the Air Force Academy and become a fighter pilot. The problem is, no one told him that brooding, emo kids who communicate via a note pad tend not to get academy commissions. Grandpa's dream seems to be to slip quietly out of life in the arms of Morpheus -- late in life he has apparently picked up a bit of jones for smack and snorts H from a vial he keeps in his fanny pack. Uncle Frank, fresh from a suicide attempt, wants the person he loves to love him back, or at the very least, to regain his standing as the number one Proust scholar in the United States. The only character who seems to lack a stated dream is Sheryl (the ever-amazing Toni Collette), Olive's and Dwayne's mother.

They all go off on a journey, ostensibly only to seek Olive's dream. But everyone's future is on the line on this trip.

Ultimately, dreams will be fulfilled -- though probably not in the way you might expect. I can't say "Little Miss Sunshine" is for everyone, but I will say Olive's talent portion of the pageant had me laughing harder than I have in at least six months, maybe longer.