Little Miss Sunshine: Are all 7 year olds such Super Freaks?

The way you place a small group of characters in a series of motel rooms seperates the characters in a clean way. But when they move to a new loaction like a VW van, and you place them in a new arrangement, you force new relationships to form. What you view as that person, exposes unexpected complications.

Steve Carrell is a brilliant guy. I feel like he's one of the few actors who doesn't give me at least some sense that he's pulling one over on me. Watching him act on screen is like hanging out with a person, in the real world. It's sort of what Jimmy Falon tries to do with skit comedy, but a lot less fucking irritating as shit. That is to say that Steve Carrell succeeds. And I'd be so excited if he were my semi-suicidal uncle. Is that weird?

I am curious to know more about the husband and wife--why they love each other, what they can't stand about each other... I figure the lack of exploration into those two is a classy thing:
like the Grapes of Wrath earring thing. Whatever we project on the story, to fil in the blanks, becomes much richer than anything they could go into. Or, perhaps, because we only have a vague beginning of a guess as to what those blanks hold, we sort of assume the best.

This film had a good emotional hold on me, and when each character hit their low (and in that moment revealed to us what they were really all about), I leaned forward in my seat, and felt very close to what it was they were going through. The literals were all fairly foreign, but the emotional places felt super familiar.

In the end, as much as I like Greg Kinnear, I wonder why no one thought to cast Adam Arkin as Alan's son. Could have been cool.