Little Miss Sunshine is a funny, touching, well acted, well-written, super joy of a movie. Short and paced to perfection, I had a blast following the characters in their really wacky journey in a beat up Volkswagen van from home to a beauty contest for 7-year-old girls some 700 miles away.

In for the ride with Olive, the 7 year-old-girl, is her motivational speaker father, her mother, the coke snorting grandfather, an uncle who days earlier tried to commit suicide, an older brother who refuses to utter a word, and of course, the van.

The jokes are plenty, the touching moments few but played to perfection, a script that is a pure gem, a pair of directors that know they aren’t the stars of the movie, and a cast that plays their roles to perfection. And boy oh boy, do they rip into beauty pageants of this sort.

If you only see one of the movies that are out now, make it this one.