There's only one reason to leave a van that quickly and I think it has something to do with a truck stop burrito.

Life is messy for the Hoover family. Grandpa (Alan Arkin) has been kicked out of an old-folks home that frowns on heroin use. Dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a dismal failure as a success-obsessed motivational speaker. Brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has entered into a Nietzsche-inspired vow of silence until he achieves his goal of becoming a pilot. (Or until he stops hating everybody, which at first seems like a longer shot.) Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) has moved in after a botched suicide attempt. And Mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) is trying to hold everything together while finding it harder and harder to conceal her impatience. Things are coming up roses for daughter Olive, though; she’s just found out that she’s won a last-minute entry into the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.  Now the whole cantankerous crew has to pile into their VW van for a life-changing, family-affirming, indie-quirky road trip complete with comedy, tragedy and sweet, sweet porn.

So you can see that screenwriter Michael Arndt certainly isn’t shy about giving his characters “issues” and you might be thinking, “Great, another one of those Sundance movies where everyone’s an endearing oddball and they do all these wacky things but we’re supposed to buy it all because they’re so gosh darn earnest!” Well, kinda, but not really. It would have been easy for things to go cartoonishly quirky, but Arndt manages to maintain his characters’ humanity. I may never have had a heroin-using grandfather or a brother who refused to speak (I wish!) but these characters still don’t seem all that far off from people I do know.

Expect a similar shot at next year's Independent Spirit Awards. Though they'll probably be better dressed.

Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris embrace the script’s tone and have a light, graceful touch with both its comedy and drama. The laughs are played mostly with a dry wit, the serious moments never become maudlin and the beauty-pageant finale is the satisfying comedic high point the movie has been building towards. The actors are all well cast, particularly Kinnear, whose toothy charm masks a well of quiet desperation. Abigail Breslin, who plays Olive, is a brilliant find, an unaffected natural and a joy to watch.

So yes, life is messy for the Hoover family, as it is for most of us. For at least a couple hours in the theater, it’s also sweetly charming, effortlessly entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny. If you can still find it, Little Miss Sunshine is one of the few must-sees in a pretty dry season for movies.

Gorilla Pants rating: 3.5 out of 4 bananas