Whenever someone asks another person what their favourite movie is these days, the questioned individual usually answers with a film that follows very closely along with their personal beliefs and convictions, but only after they take a long moment of careful deliberation. They treat the inquiry like it's another way of saying "Who are you really?" because in a culture such as ours, where media plays such a pivotal role in both our development and daily lives, it really is a penetrating question.

Fortunately for me, I'm able to answer the question before the person I'm talking to is finished asking. Oscar-nominated Little Miss Sunshine, an independent film starring Steve Carell, is always my championed film, a movie I've watched at least 30 times and will continue watching till I'm too old and gray to even open my eyes. Ever since I saw it for the first time last year, I've been possessed by an addiction for it like William Burroughs in Junky, wide-eyed and crazy.

The film tells the story of a modern family with all the typical dysfunction: a nihilistic and determined teenage son, an exasperated mother, an optimistic but plain 12-year old daughter, a lecherous and drug-addicted grandfather, a gullible, motivational speaker father (Alan Arkin), and a suicidal ex-scholar (Steve Carell) that travel cross-country to fulfill the daughter, Olive's, dream of being in a beauty pageant. As they progress from their hometown to their destination, the at first estranged family grow closer and stronger through disaster, hilarity, death, and revelations of the past. They arrive at the pageant only to realise that Olive is beautiful no matter what any pageant judges say, and end the trip a family.

What really makes this movie exceptional is not simply the top-notch acting by the entire cast but, rather, the realism and altruism displayed the whole time you're viewing. Rather than make situations unbelievably coincidental and connecting bridges with inexplicable plot holes, Little Miss Sunshine provides a breath of fresh air in it's display of situations that at least one of which is bound to make you relate to or believe. And it's not necessarily the big things that you're drawn to, either. For example, there is a particularly notable scene in which the comical grandfather dies of a heroin overdose and the father, not being able to stay with the corpse but unable to legally relocate it, stuffs the body in the trunk of the van. As they leave the hospital, he then accidentally breaks the vehicle's horn, rendering it a constantly blaring siren. When pulled over by a police officer for the noise, the entire family is terrified of being found out but is both disgusted and suprised when the officer stumbles across, not the body, but the grandfather's secret collection of pornography. In a hilarious but admittedly odd moment, the cop immediately loses his "tough guy" demeanor and lets the family go...provided, of course, they let him confiscate the magazines.

The movie is fantastic watch and was suprisingly good film that I just happened to catch one day, flipping through the movie channels on cable. While some rather ignorant people might assume that the title "independent" denotes nothing but college art films and grassroots revolution documents, Little Miss Sunshine stands as a testament to the potential greatness of the not-so-high-budget genre.