Little Miss Sunshine - Jokes = Logan

I will give credit where credit is due: New Yorker film reviewer Anthony Lane came up with the Logan/Little Miss Sunshine parallel-- although the connections are pretty obvious: Logan is a dysfunctional family road trip movie, complete with a grouchy dad, an irritable old man facing his imminent demise-- who even poses as Logan's grandfather-- and a mute kid who eventually finds a voice; when I asked Alex and Ian after the film if it reminded them of a comedy we had seen, they immediately made the connection . . . anyway, the important thing is that Logan is a dysfunctional family road trip movie without the jokes-- it's about decaying bodies in a decaying country, the difficulties and responsibilities of elder care, Alzheimer's and aging, death and decomposition, the awkwardness of meeting your young clone in female form and other hysterically entertaining topics; it is very dark and very grisly, and while I loved a couple of scenes-- especially Professor Xavier's seizure at the hotel and a mournful touch at the very end-- I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, when I can just drop the kids off at the movies and they can go live inside the darkness of the Marvel Universe on their own for a few hours, while I read a book outside in the sunshine.