REEL CRITICS:’Little Miss Sunshine’ a comic highlight

“Little Miss Sunshine” is a film that takes the notion of a dysfunctional family to a new level of comic madness. Michael Arndt’s screenplay provides measures of quirky humor, sarcasm and outrageous behavior from everyone involved. The opening 15 minutes culminate in a fast-food dinner from hell that introduces each character’s place in the bizarre family hierarchy.

Alan Arkin is a bawdy grandpa who snorts heroin in the bathroom. Greg Kinnear plays his son who has pipe dreams of making his lame motivational program into a million-dollar success. Toni Collette is his wife, desperately trying to keep the family together. Paul Dano is their alienated teenage son who has not spoken a word to anyone in nine months. Steve Carell plays Collette’s gay brother who attempts suicide after losing his teaching job over an affair with a handsome grad student.

All these strange personas hover around 10-year-old Olive, an unlikely beauty contestant played to perfection by Abigail Breslin. Her questions draw out refreshing honesty and insight from her weird relatives. They frantically strive to get her to the beauty contest on time in their old VW bus that has more breakdowns than the family psyche.

This is a strange and offbeat comedy with a gentle nature and good heart. It’s not for everyone, but the audience at my Lido Theatre screening got some real laughs for their money.

Indiana Jones once asked, “Snakes — why does it have to be snakes?”

But could you substitute any other creature and have such a killer movie title as “Snakes on a Plane?” Hamsters? Flamingos? They just don’t have the same cachet.

This has certainly been the most buzzedabout movie of the year, and if cliched camp is what you’re craving, this one’s for you.

There’s a plethora of slithering, hissing, ruthless animals trapped aboard an airplane. And that’s just the passengers.

Samuel L. Jackson, as the baddest, coolest FBI agent ever, must escort a key witness from Honolulu to L.A. to testify against a major crime lord. The logistics of smuggling hundreds of rare, deadly snakes aboard a plane are glossed over. But we don’t care how they got there; we just want to see the snakes.

The ensuing attack on the passengers is a marvel of gross-out horror. This is what everyone came to see — creatures with lethal jaws rising up to chomp down on every conceivable body part. You’ll gasp, cover your eyes and squirm.

You’ll also laugh, as there are some funny lines mixed in with the gore. David Koechner (“Anchorman”) is the funniest pilot since Peter Graves waxed rhapsodic about gladiator movies in “Airplane.”

Jackson saves the day in a clever, if preposterous, finale. He even lands a date with the beautiful, resourceful stewardess (Julianna Margulies). A Hollywood ending doesn’t get any better than this, until the inevitable sequel — killer poodles, anyone?