“You know what? F ** k beauty pageants. Life is one fucking pageant after another. School, then college, then work,” Paul Dano’s character said in Little Miss Sunshine at one point in the film. And isn’t that the truth? The mad race to win at one thing or the other is endless. Life is one obstacle stacked on top of the next, until It’s a pretty morbid way of looking at it, but it’s also realistic.However, life’s issues shouldn’t stop you from enjoying and celebrating some of its ordinary and extraordinary times. Director Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris is exactly about it.

The film stars a host of familiar and talented faces, including Steve Carell, Toni Colette, Greg Kinnear, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano and Alan Arkin. So you already know the acting is going to be tight and subtle, as it should be. Fortunately, the fun storyline from Michael Arndt, who also wrote the beloved Toy Story 3, helps. The tale revolves around the dysfunctional and eccentric Hoover family, which is filled with all kinds of characters. A teenage son who reads Nietzsche and takes a vow of silence (Dano), a little girl who wants to compete in a beauty pageant (Breslin), an addicted grandfather (Arkin), a smoky and hyper mother (Colette) and a suicidal heartbroken professor Proust (Carell).

Obviously half of your job is done when you have an interesting mix of characters who have their own voices. But, what adds the spark here is the brilliant cast of the set, none of which is out of sync. Carell is suitably sarcastic, Kinnear is as frustrating as he is meant to be. But the actor who steals the film through a sequence is Dano. Paul Dano, who was quite young at the time of filming, showed his potential when he got an explosion post when he discovered that his character suffers from color blindness and therefore couldn’t pursue his sole ambition to fly airplanes. Dano is angry, hurt and broken that his vow of silence means nothing at the end of it all. That all of his hard work and education was wasted. There is also a sweet sibling bond that the creators show below, between the characters of Breslin and Dano.

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Although it was previously rejected as an independent film, Little Miss Sunshine went on to raise $ 101 million from its $ 8 million budget. The film not only broke the box office, but also turned out to be a critical success. It was nominated for four Oscars, including one for Best Picture. So proving that a big part of the reason some movies perform better than others isn’t just because it’s made by a big studio and has a great cast (that surely helps) , but because of the honesty of the intention. If you appropriately serve what you set out to do, sooner or later the project will be recognized in one way or another. Fortunately, in the case of Little Miss Sunshine, he managed to win over all kinds of people on all levels.

You can stream Little Miss Sunshine on Disney Plus Hotstar.