When I go to see a movie in an art-house theater I know I’m taking the risk of coming out feeling depressed. The opening of this one had me a bit worried:

• A motivational speaker gives a rousing talk about how to be a winner and not a loser, to an audience of about seven people.
• An old man snorts a couple of lines.
• A little girl watches a videotape of a beauty contest and imitates the contestants’ moves.
• A middle-aged woman goes to the hospital to pick up her brother who has attempted suicide. She brings him home and tells him he has to share a bedroom with his teen aged nephew, who reads Nietzsche and doesn’t speak.

Things get progressively stranger as the family decides to embark on a road trip to help the young daughter enter a beauty contest.

It ends up being a very funny movie. It isn’t particularly original. The basic elements of the road trip and the lovable losers (who in the final analysis probably aren’t really losers at all) will be familiar from a lot of films. Still it kept me laughing and I would generally recommend it.

Even though one of the main characters is seven years old, I wouldn’t recommend it for someone that young. It’s more suitable for teenagers and up. It includes bad language, drug use (presented in a disapproving light) and “mature themes”.