A disarming comedy about an eccentric family

Twentieth Century Fox's critically acclaimed comedy on familial dysfunction, "Little Miss Sunshine" starring Steve Carell ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin"), Toni Collette ("In Her Shoes") and Greg Kinnear ("Stuck on You"), will be shown soon exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas.

America's biggest-grossing independent film of the year, "Little Miss Sunshine" is a family road comedy that shatters the mold. Brazenly satirical and yet deeply human, the film introduces audiences to one of the most endearingly fractured families in recent cinema history: the Hoovers, whose trip to a pre-pubescent beauty pageant results not only in comic mayhem but in death, transformation and a moving look at the surprising rewards of being losers in a winning-crazed culture.

A runaway hit at the Sundance Film Festival, where it played to standing ovations, the film strikes a nerve with everyone who's ever been awestruck by how their muddled families seem to make it after all.

In the film, no one among the Hoovers quite has it together, but it's not for lack of trying. Father Richard (Kinnear), a hopelessly optimistic motivational speaker, is desperately attempting to sell his 9-step program for success -- without much success. Meanwhile, the Hoovers' "pro-honesty" mother Sheryl (Collette) is constantly harried by her family's eccentric secrets, especially those of her brother (Carell), a suicidal Proust scholar fresh out of the hospital after being jilted by his gay lover. Then there are the younger Hoovers with their unlikely dreams - the four-eyed, slightly plump, seven year-old would-be beauty queen Olive (Abigail Brealin) and Dwayne (Paul Dano), an anger-fueled, Nietzsche-reading teen who has taken a staunch vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy. Topping off the family is the grandfather (Alan Arkin), a foul-mouthed pleasure-seeker recently kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin.

They might not be the picture of perfect mental health, but when a fluke gets Olive invited to compete in the fiercely competitive Little Miss Sunshine competition in California, the whole Hoover family rallies behind her. They pile into their rusted-out VW bus and head West on a three-day tragicomic journey filled with madcap surprises and leading up to Olive's big debut - which will change the entire misfit family in ways they could never imagine.

"Little Miss Sunshine" features the directorial debut of renowned music video directors (and husband-and-wife team) Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Better known as iconoclasts on the culture's leading edge, Dayton and Faris didn't necessarily expect to make their debut with a family comedy - but then they never expected to run into the anything-but-typical Hoover family.

Says Dayton, "We wanted the experience to be drawn from what we love most in movies, one that celebrates human eccentricities." Faris adds, "The story instantly struck a chord with us. We had always wanted to make a film that would ride a lot of tones; that would have a strong emotional life as well as lots of humor. We felt that `Little Miss Sunshine' was a story that shifts much in the same way that life shifts, moving from drama to farce to reflection and back to farce again."