Little Miss Sunshine is a feel good film that's actually about feeling good, instead of it being a by-product of someone we like getting laid.

It follows a family of assorted insecure people who each deal with it in their own way, taking their daughter/sister/niece/granddaughter on a road trip to take part in a beauty pageant.

The little girl Olive is absolutely adorable, and is a naive young lady who's being guided through life by her family who are all wrong but together are kind of right. Her dad is a man who tries to sell happiness with his patented self-help programme; her mum is not happy with her marriage; her brother wallows in misery and reads Neitzsche, a man made famous for the phrase "God is dead" and linked with Nihilism; her uncle, who attempted suicide, and her Grandfather who snorts heroin. I'm seriously surprised this film didn't end with social services showing up.

The film looks really nice, but the writing is patchy. There's quite a lot of expositional dialogue, such as Olive extensively questioning her Uncle about his attempted suicide at the start while they're tucking into a bargain bucket. Some of the plot points also feel pretty forced, like the emo brother discovering he's colour blind, and the uncle immediately going "That means you can't be a pilot.", essentially slashing the lad's dreams as if it were one of his wrists. Where's the compassion? You wouldn't go "You have cancer. You're going to be bald."

There's lots of symbolism in the film, such as them driving around in a bright yellow hippie camper van, and the little girl doing a sliding tile puzzle of a smiley face, though some of it is not so subtle, like a road sign for "Carefree Highway", or a little girl in the competition called Charisma.

When they arrive at the pageant, it's filled with preened little girls with fake tans and more hair than body mass and encrusted with make-up. Our little Olive can't compete with her gap-toothed smile and simple pony-tail and big glasses, but this is the point of the film; you can't fake happiness and you have to be content with who you are.

Olive gets on stage and performs what can only be described as a strip routine taught to her by her Grandfather, and the heartless pricks in the audience start booing her, so the family all jump on stage and join in with the dance, thus completing the cathartic journey of letting go and finding true happiness.

This is a heart-warming and funny film about being honest and truly content with who you are, and while it's far from perfect, I'm willing to accept it as it is (which I suppose is the point), as it brilliantly spills its happy MESSage onto your chest. You know, where your heart is.

Little Miss Sunshine made me a Mr Happy.