this offbeat dramedy has been on my watchlist for like three years now thanks to a group of students at my school who were obsessed with paul dano and made an endeavor to watch every movie he was in. i'm not sure it continued past, like, three movies? or maybe it did and i was off doing other things. either way, one of those people is now my partner, so the real winner of the paul dano girlies is me. i think he's a very funny man.

i finally got around to watching it, and i do see why this movie is so well-loved. it's very quirky, it's very funny, it's very unique and i had a very fun time watching it. the visuals are fun and very nostalgic (probably because it's from 2006?) and the humor is great. each character is unique and despite the purposely rocky start, i grew to care about every single one. even the father. a little bit. only a little bit. perhaps my favorite performance is from olive's actress - it's really difficult to find a child actor who can be both good at acting and convincingly like an actual child. she's super talented, and she acts just like my own younger sister, which made me instantly attached. paul dano is also really funny in this movie. and hank breaking bad is there

a lot of the humor is derived from the misery of the characters - but the movie's heart comes from them moving past it. it's a nice dynamic and these two things play nicely off each other. it sometimes leans into secondhand embarassment more than i really like, especially in its final act, and some of the sound can get frustrating. (broken car horn, overlapping yelling arguments, etc.) i think these elements were kind of painful, not really in a good way, for me, anyways. at the same time though, i can see how these elements make the movie feel more authentic and grounded despite its more exaggerated elements.

i liked it, though! the great outweighs the bad in this movie, absolutely, and it's earned its spot as a beloved flick. it gets four broken little yellow busses.