Independent Film Guide

What It's About
Talk about dysfunction. Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a floundering motivational speaker whose wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) is losing patience with his talk of "winners" and "losers"; Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is hooked on smack; teen Dwayne (Paul Dano) hasn't talked in a year; and Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), a Proust scholar, has just tried to commit suicide after being spurned by his grad-student boyfriend. Just about the only well-balanced one is Olive (Abigail Breslin), a bespectacled seven-year-old who lands a last-second slot at a beauty pageant. Too broke to afford plane fare, the entire family piles into a beat-up VW bus to get her there in time to compete.

Why You Should See It It would be way too easy to turn a film about a family of road-tripping misfits into a slapstick, caricature-heavy farce. But the Hoovers, for all their quirks, endear themselves to us because they're so touchingly real, thanks in large part to the performances of this knockout cast. And while it's definitely laugh-until-you-cry hilarious, the movie isn't cruel about the Hoovers' foibles; the script's razor-sharp edges are burnished by a genuine sweetness and warmth that not many movies get right these days.

Unforgettable Scene Toward the end of the family's trip, Dwayne experiences a profound personal crisis (we won't ruin it) and goes berserk. Fleeing the car, he runs down an embankment and refuses to return until Olive, carefully picking her way down the hill in red cowboy boots, puts her arm around his shoulders. It's a simple, nearly wordless scene that perfectly encapsulates the movie's central message: Even a loser has people who love him. Well, something like that.

Breakout Star In a cast full of veteran actors, Paul Dano, who played the geeky Klitz in 'The Girl Next Door,' more than holds his own as the Nietzche-loving rebellious teen -- he practically steals the entire movie. Scribbling furiously on his notepad phrases like "Welcome to hell" and "Go hug Mom" (trust us, it's funny) and conveying mute looks of horror at the goings-on around him, Dano does more without opening his mouth than most actors do with pages of dialogue.
Watch Dano/Breslin Unscripted from Sundance

Festival Buzz Every year there's a movie that emerges as "the hit of Sundance." In 2006, it was 'Sunshine.' Shortly after its debut screening, the movie -- which, impressively, marks the directorial debut of husband-and-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris -- sparked a frenzied four-studio bidding war. Fox Searchlight won, paying a record $10.5 million for acquisition rights.

Recommended If You Liked
'The Royal Tenenbaums'
'The Squid and the Whale'
'Drop Dead Gorgeous'
'National Lampoon's Vacation'
'Sideways'

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