Sometimes the timing is perfect ... and, quite frankly, creepy: "Little Miss Sunshine"

Really ... it's almost like John Mark Karr should have a cameo in this movie. You know, if he can get a furlough from the funny farm.

Here's a movie I really didn't know much about, other than it was well-received, before The Person Who Gives My Life All Meaning and I used our movie theater gift certificates the other night. It's a shame we burned those, though, because "Little Miss Sunshine" would have been well worth the prime-time price.

The plot seems simple: Dysfunctional family takes road trip so little girl can compete in a beauty pageant. But as with so many dysfunctional family comedy-dramas, there's so much more! Like the mother's suicidal brother, and the father's crazy dad, and the couple's withdrawn son. Hell, while we're at it, why don't we throw a cross-dressing cousin and a disembodied hand that lives in a box into the fray?

(Yeah, a shout-out to Thing. And you thought I preferred Uncle Fester.)

Although we have to wait for the family to hit the road, the build-up is necessary and well-handled. We meet each character separately at the start, then watch them interact enough to see the various strains between people -- husband-wife, mother-son, grandpa-son.

The mother, Toni "Don't call me Muriel" Collette brings her professor brother, Steve "I can do deadpan, seriously!" Carell, home from the hospital and puts him up in her son's room. You may recognize the kid as Klitz from "The Girl Next Door," although he's taken a vow of silence here. Typical teenage horsesh*t.

Meanwhile, the little girl is being coached for the beauty pageant by her grandpa, the hee-larious Alan Arkin. He's been in plenty of stuff, but right now I can't get the image of him as John Cusack's shrink in "Grosse Pointe Blank" out of my mind. "That wasn't designed to make me feel good!" Finally, we have the girl's father and Arkin's son, a struggling motivational speaker played by Greg "If we never talk about 'Dear God' I'll be OK" Kinnear.

If that sounds like a decent cast, well, it is. Best of all may be the little girl, Abigail Breslin. The name meant nothing to me, but near the end of the movie, my wife pointed out that she was the even littler girl in "Signs" who always wanted a glass of water. Nice call, honey!

So yeah, a great ensemble, and some pretty funny dialogue and developments as the family makes it way from New Mexico to California for the "Little Miss Sunshine" pageant. Grandpa gives some hugely amusing advice to the brooding teen, Kinnear and Carell -- with nothing in common as a motivator and a scholar, respectively -- argue, someone gets extremely sleepy ... the hits just keep coming, but not in a slapdash Will Ferrell-Jack Black way. This actually makes sense, even when it gets outrageous, and it's drier and darker than simple locker-room humor. If there was a fart joke in "Sunshine," I missed it.

Good as it is, none of the movie can prepare you for the finale, which hands-down was one of the funniest and cleverest things I've seen in a long time. As you might guess, the little girls beauty pageant is shocking and creepy in its own way, and the movie's ultimate commentary on the whole sordid business is razor-sharp. Ask my wife ... I really was rolling in the end. And for once, it wasn't from me telling people that if we had a daughter, her name would be "JonBenet."