Wildly entertaining and side-splittingly hilarious, Little Miss Sunshine is a movie that celebrates the inner loser in us all. It isn’t an underdog story where the slow kid wins the race, or where the ugly ducking becomes the beautiful swan, or where the small kid gets the best of the bullies. The slow kid stays last, the ugly ducking stays ugly, and brother, you better believe that that small kid will get his underwear pulled right over his head. Twice.

Johnathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, whose previous work includes mostly advertising, have taken staples of American cinema: the Road Trip, the underdog story, and the dysfunctional family, and somehow pieced them together into a story that is unique, heartfelt, and incredibly hilarious.

The Hoover family, headed by Richard (Greg Kinnear), is a family of misfits and losers. Richard teaches a seven-step program to success to half-empty rooms at the nearby community college while Sheryl (Toni Collette) stressfully tries to hold the family together at dinner with buckets of KFC and cartoon character mugs. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) is the second most famous Proust scholar in America, who attempts suicide when his boyfriend runs off to be with the first most famous scholar. Rounding out the cast is their foul-mouthed, heroin-smoking grandfather (Alan Arkin), dysfunctional son Dwayne, who has taken a vow of silence, and of course Olive, around whom the movie truly revolves.

Olive, whose dream is to one day be the winner of one of those sick Jon Benet-killing beauty pageants, is suddenly given the chance to do just that when she wins the regional Little Miss Sunshine competition by default and given the opportunity to compete in the national competition in California. Not wanting to destroy their daughter’s chance at happiness, the Hoover family piles into the VW van for a road trip filled with hijinx and escapade.

It truly is the setup for what should be an awful movie. But Little Miss Sunshine fires on all cylinders. The dialogue is sharp and witty as the movie takes aim at America’s obsession with winning. It tells us that being a loser actually might not be so bad, while reminding us again and again how much of a loser we actually are.

The final scene had the entire audience on the floor in stitches, and is well worth the entire price of admission. Little Miss Sunshine is not to be missed.