Out of all the movies I've seen, I've related to quite a few of them. But the ones that really stick in my mind are the ones with themes that speak to my own experiences. When I went to see Little Miss Sunshine,  I had just moved back to the area I grew up in to enter college - I hadn't lived in Florida quite long enough to make any lasting friendships, but it was plenty long enough to fall out of touch with my childhood friends. There were few things I understood better than the awkwardness of starting from scratch.

It was appropriate, then, that Little Miss Sunshine is a movie about just that. I watched just about every character lost just about everything, whether it was their job, their dream for the future, or the things they thought defined their identity.

The movie could have easily left things there; there have been many powerful, award-winning movies that chronicle the descent of their characters into misery and decay. I've always squirmed through those movies, but with my film buff friends throwing around phrases like "the truth of the human condition" to describe them, I never tried to argue.

But Little Miss Sunshine goes a step beyond stripping everything away from its characters:  it lets them start over. Even though not a single one of them gets what they want, the movie gives them a triumphant ending anyway. And as an unabashed optimist, I think that's much more truthful.

Message aside, the execution was absolutely perfect. I admire and envy the writing, and the way it could play a plot point for drama in one scene and laughs in another without giving me whiplash. ("Where's your grandpa now?" "In the trunk of our car!") The actors brought the characters to life wonderfully. While my favorite was Steve Carrell's Frank, I'm impressed at Paul Dano's ability to make me adore Dwayne, who I would probably want to slap in real life. The family's broken down van is practically a character itself, and I'm mad that I didn't think of it first. 

Though I'm long past the uncertainty of my freshman year of college, Little Miss Sunshine is still an important movie to me. Rewatching it always reminds me that while starting over is terrifying, it isn't impossible.