Ain’t no sunshine on T.J.’s road-trip family vacation

Times sports columnist T.J. Simers recently returned from a family vacation in an RV, just in time to catch the new film “Little Miss Sunshine,” which also involves a family road trip. He decided to compare the two.

IT was the poster that attracted me to “Little Miss Sunshine,” the one featuring a Volkswagen bus and a bunch of people running after it that read: “A family on the verge of a breakdown.”

Just like mine.

And it all began on a bus, albeit larger than the one in the advertisement, but just the same, an enticing canister designed to bring families together for long periods of time, like that’s a good thing.

Obviously I was curious about the similarities in the kooky families, but the movie began by emphasizing the differences that we have by focusing on Olive, the fictional Hoover family’s adorable daughter. We never had one of those, although we do have two daughters, all grown up now, and nope, still not adorable.

The Hoover family introductions continued with the son I never had, Dwayne, who took a vow of silence nine months earlier, making him the ideal child, and now rooming with Frank, his gay uncle who just failed in a suicide attempt. Finally someone we could relate to, an uncle named Frank.

As for Mom and Dad, Sheryl and Richard, they were on the verge of going broke and a little sick of each other’s voices, while Grandpa spent his time snorting heroin and delivering advice that can’t be repeated.

Pretty much a family like any other, all right, although not saddled with a Grocery Store Bagger for a son-in-law, and not that I’m complaining, because someone had to dump the black water in the RV.

THE only reason I had any interest in this movie was because I’d just come off a 2,600-mile trip in our own bus, with the two daughters, a Bagger, a baby and the wife. We rented a 37-footer this summer -- nine miles to the gallon at a time when a gallon of fuel costs about the same as a new big-screen TV.

I thought it would be fun, and the first time I suggested the trip to the family, no one rolled their eyes. A father never forgets a magical moment like that.

When Richard suggested taking a bus ride in the movie, almost everyone objected, which made me wonder if some members of our family had contacted the actors in “Little Miss Sunshine” and advised them not to do it under any circumstances. I wouldn’t know, because the family is no longer speaking to me.

The film’s adorable daughter, though, needed to go from New Mexico to California to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant, so everyone piled into a rickety bus and the movie was on.

And the movie was fun, obviously because everyone was acting and not really related or wondering what kind of granddaughter one might get because the daughter had no problems messing around with a Bagger.

Now don’t get me wrong, the movie made a very good attempt to make it like real life, the family totally ignoring everything the father, a.k.a. Richard, had to say, and the father was a motivational speaker by trade.

He tried to tell the adorable daughter, for example, not to eat ice cream unless she wanted to become fat, and yet everyone ganged up on him like he wasn’t speaking the truth, the adorable daughter then gorging herself on ice cream.

When they do the sequel to “Little Miss Sunshine,” and Britney Spears plays the grown-up role of the adorable daughter, I suspect we’ll see her sitting in the audience at the Miss America Pageant wondering what went wrong. She’ll have an ice cream sandwich in her hand, of course.

The thing about the movie, the dad was nothing but helpful, full of wisdom, but locked in constant arguments with Mom, who seemed to think she knew better -- when someone her age had to know they called the TV show “Father Knows Best” for good reason.

BACK on the road, the VW bus broke down. Everyone in the movie was forced to push to get it rolling and then jump in, but there were no complaints. A fictional family, indeed.

And to think about all the bellyaching I heard -- a little food poisoning, nausea, diarrhea, and they couldn’t deal with being unable to use the bathroom on the RV because the (malfunctioning) sensor light showed it three-fourths full. I thought that’s why they had those outdoor johns at campsites, and from what I could tell, most of them even had toilet paper.

Mom and Dad, of course, got into a fight and stopped talking to each other.

The same thing happened in “Little Miss Sunshine” too, but because of it, they took off in the bus and left their daughter behind. Haven’t we all thought about doing that at one time or another?

Dad got tired of driving, and I don’t know about you, but would you let a Grocery Store Bagger or a heroin-snorting grandfather take the wheel in relief?

So the Hoover family pulled into a hotel. Our RV, of course, was a rolling hotel, but since everyone hated it so much, we spent as many nights in hotels as we did in the rolling hotel.

Had we run into the Hoover family on the road, we both would have been better off exchanging vehicles and daughters.

We left the grandmother at home, because she would never have survived a trip like this, and she doesn’t even snort cocaine. She prefers Prozac, I believe.

Grandpa Hoover hit the heroin and wound up getting tossed into the back of the bus for the ride to the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. The thing about these buses, they have lots of room for storage.

I can’t think of any other reason to rent such a bus, and the Hoover son who didn’t speak finally did, and told everyone, “I’m not getting back on that bus again,” stealing the very words out of the mouths of our two daughters before they cut the trip in half and flew home. Obviously, our girls were not on their way to any beauty pageant.

The movie had to end at some point, so the Hoover family arrived at the pageant to find a bunch of little girls made up to look like alluring models. The adorable daughter was obviously out of place, but Grandpa had choreographed her dance routine, which allowed the adorable daughter the chance to deliver the movie’s best line.

I won’t give it away here, though, because I left the theater smiling, and anyone who has a family and has spent any amount of time with it this summer deserves the same chance to witness a happy ending -- even if it is a fantasy.