Welcome to the dinner table of the Hoovers, a cluttered affair with a tub of take-out fried chicken tossed in the center along with a bottle of Sprite and paper plates scattered around the edges.

If it's not quite Martha Stewart's idea middle-class bliss, well neither are its occupants. The teenage son, Dwayne (Paul Dano), is a sullen Nietze acolyte who has taken a vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy. His uncle Frank (Steve Carell), a Proust scholar, is recovering from a suicide attempt made in the throws of a broken love affair. Grampa Ed (Alan Arkin) is camping out with the family because he's been evicted from his retirement community for drug abuse.

Meanwhile, the mother, Sheryl (Toni Collette), bristles with disappointment in her husband. And finally, at the head of the table, Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a down on his luck motivational speaker whose own family stands as a repudiation of the very industry that he is struggling for a toehold in.

The lone bumblebee of exuberance buzzing around the edges of this disheveled clan is 10-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin). Olive has a dream of being a beauty queen - a dream that she, unlike the rest of the family, has managed to keep intact.

Dinner with the Hoovers is a still life of claustrophobic resentment - a pressure cooker of people with no good news to share - until a phone call blows the top off with the announcement that Olive has been crowned winner of the local "Little Miss Sunshine Beauty Pageant." It turns out the girl who beat her has been disqualified for using illegal diet pills. That revelation by itself should give her parents pause about what kind of world their little girl is being drawn into, but with Olive squealing and bouncing around the house no one has time to think about much except how to get her to California for the next level of the competition.

With that fateful phone call "Little Miss Sunshine," a dark suburban comedy by husband and wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, is transformed into the funniest road movie in years.

The family piles into a VW van, a pressure cooker of a different sort, for the two-day drive to the pageant. One can only imagine how a family that barely handles dinner together will fare on an extended car trip. But Olive, with her CD player and dreams of glamour, sits blissfully in the center of this caldron of domestic torture.

"Little Miss Sunshine" doesn't use the heavy handed gags of, let's say, "Talladega Nights" but in its own quirky way manages to dish up more laughs. Part of the humor comes from the contrast between the Hoover's scruffy portrayal of family life and the exaltation of superficial glamour they are racing toward.

The road trip is not kind to the Hoovers and reality only intrudes on their dysfunctional bickering to offer new bruises and humiliations - the clutch burns out forcing them to push start the van after every stop and Frank bumps into his ex.

Without much grace, or even conscious intention, the family rallies around Olive and, slowly but surely, around each other.

"Little Miss Sunshine" is a movie of surprising heart. The Hoovers respond to each successive setback with a gathering wellspring of determination. Dayton and Faris are careful not to let the plot drift into a Hallmark moment and every triumph is short lived and quickly overcome by the need to stay one step ahead of calamity. Somewhere in this relentless struggle the humor of the movie finds its spark and the Hoovers discover the strength of their humanity in the rubble of their dreams.

The finale of the beauty pageant is a comedic gem and I won't spoil it for you, but there is something wonderful about seeing the ethos of the Hoovers come face to face with that of the prepubescent beauty industry. Olive stands out as a sweet, beautifully ordinary little girl in a line up of icky Jon Bonet Ramsey replicas.

A couple of times a year a movie shows up that you probably haven't heard much about but just have to see. "Little Miss Sunshine" is one of them.

Bruce Bulloch can be contacted via wseditor@robinsonnews.com

"Little Miss Sunshine"

Directed by: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Rated: R

(Three and one half stars)