Sunshine Cleaning

My final theatrical viewing (and thus review) as a college sophomore is Christine Jeffs' Sunshine Cleaning. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but seeing the names of two of the best (and need I add, most attractive) young actresses in Hollywood today - Amy Adams and Emily Blunt - above the title was certainly incentive enough for me to give it a look. It's good that I didn't have any huge expectations, because Sunshine Cleaning was a decidedly mediocre film. Although an enjoyable enough piece of fluff, it suffers from a flimsy premise and what we may call an excess of "quirk" - the post-Little Miss Sunshine/Juno desire or need to create off-the-wall, oddball originals in a story where real humans (or simulacrums of humanity, anyway) would work just fine.

Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) is a former high school big shot, who is now struggling to make ends-meet as a cleaning maid and single mom. A stray comment from her ex-boyfriend (and now illicit squeeze) Zac (Steve Zahn), and her desire to send precocious, hyperactive son Oscar (Jason Spevack) to a private school, leads to her to form the titular company with her out-of-work, lazy sister Norah (Emily Blunt) - a clean-up service which specializes in crime and trauma scenes. Their business is a huge success, but forces both of them to relive their own traumatic past - their Mother committed suicide when they were children, which deeply scarred Norah in particular.

Sunshine Cleaning has the makings of an interesting story, but never quite pulls it off. The cast is made up of self-consciously off-the-wall characters - the precocious, money-scheming grandpa (Alan Arkin, who seems to play nothing but these characters any more), the obnoxiously intelligent son, the perhaps bi-sexual lazy punk slacker Norah, the one-armed cleaning service guy (Clifton Collins Jr.) - that are rather blatant pandering to a certain demographic of viewers. The movie does have a few amusing moments, but for the most part its attempts at humor are twee, slight and obvious to the point of being obnoxious. The more serious moments are not necessarily less heavy-handed (first Oscar and this Mom "talking to Heaven" on a CB radio? Come on), but they're certainly more palatable; the movie does a fine job of drawing Rose's conflicted character, pondering her demise from popularity to mediocrity, but seems to have a hard time grasping Norah and the others. Norah's character arc in particular is hard to accept, and the non-conclusion of her storyline at the end seems to be either a) setting up a sequel (which I find unlikely) or b) a lazy cop-out.

Amy Adams carries the film; if Enchanted and Charlie Wilson's War convinced me she's a gorgeous and lovely screen presence and Doubt that she's a damned fine actress to boot, then Sunshine Cleaning merely reinforces all of the above. Rose is by far the best-defined and most believable (and sympathetic) character, and Adams hits all the right emotional and acting notes. Emily Blunt, usually so vibrant and alive in her roles, seems to struggle with Norah's cryptic nature; other than her being a loser, and her disturbed and obsessive interest in her Mom's suicide, we don't learn much about who she is or what's driving her. Blunt gives a mostly one-note performance that, whether due to the actress or (more likely) the script, never really takes off.

The rest of the cast is little more than adequate. Alan Arkin plays the same eccentric old man bit he's been tossing off for years (cf. Little Miss Sunshine), and he contributes little to the proceedings, while Jason Spevack is (predictably) mostly annoying as Oscar. Steve Zahn, Clifton Collins Jr., Mary Lynn Rajskub and Judith Jones give adequate performances but don't contribute much to the film at large.

Sunshine Cleaning is worth a look if you're into this kind of film, you (like me) like the two lead actresses, or you don't have anything better to do with 98 minutes. It's certainly not a film for all tastes or all moods, and probably wouldn't hold up to repeat viewings, but I can at least recommend it as passable fluff on a lazy spring afternoon. If nothing else, you can always ogle the babes.

Rating: 6/10 - Use Your Own Discretion