The Sunshine Band

Image credit: Little Miss Sunshine: Eric Lee

By the time Little Miss Sunshine premiered at Sundance six months later, Virgin had proven a $109 million sleeper smash, a turn of events that seemed to stun Carell more than anyone. Kinnear recalls, ''At Sundance, people were coming up to Steve, saying, 'Oh my God! The 40 Year-Old Virgin!' I could tell this was something he was adjusting to.'' He laughs. ''And now, when he pulls up in his white limousine and his white fox-skin coats and Elton John sunglasses, he seems like he's figured it out.''

Even without Carell's newfound drawing power, Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice insists the time is ripe for an indie like Sunshine to bask in the mainstream sun. ''There's that moment in the summer where the audience is hungering for something more original,'' says Rice, whose company has shown a particular knack for summer counterprogramming, from The Full Monty to Napoleon Dynamite to Garden State. ''You get a wave of relief at discovering something which isn't being presented to you on 4,000 screens with $50 million in advertising.''

Then again, in life, as in Little Miss Sunshine, success is rarely guaranteed. History is packed with examples of movies that received sloppy, wet kisses at Sundance — The Spitfire Grill; Happy, Texas; Tadpole; the list goes on — only to get snubbed by the general moviegoing audience. ''It is true that at festivals, you're in a bubble,'' Kinnear says. ''I still have no idea whether this movie will find an audience beyond what it's found so far. You just don't know.''

The real irony is, Little Miss Sunshine is all about how sick the American obsession with success is in the first place, whether that means beauty pageants or movie grosses. Which brings us back to Breslin, whose Olive is, in the end, the true heart of the film. Ask the now-10-year-old actress what her goals are for the summer and she doesn't mention breaking You, Me and Dupree's box office take or locking in a Dakota Fanning-level payday for her next movie. She wants to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. She wants to enjoy a break from working on math. And more than anything else, she says, ''I want to catch a frog.'' How's that for a little ray of sunshine?

Additional reporting by Missy Schwartz