It's a pair of big eyes meet another pair (sorry Ms. Blunt)! Amy Adams and Steve Zahn do make an adorable couple, their moony fondness is all over the place, but in Zelanian Christine Jeffs' third feature SUNSHINE CLEANING, they are adulterers with a long history. Back in high school they were an admirable item, Rose (Adams) was the head of cheerleaders and Mac (Zahn) is the school jock, but now they lead separated lives, he is a married cop and she is a single mother in the house-cleaning business, linked by their motel-room trysts, he is the one who got away, but Rose just cannot let him go.
Where there is muck, there is brass, driven by her business acumen - it may be inherited from her father Joel (Arkin), and hurt for money to send her 8-year-old son Oscar (Spevack, cut and precociously understanding) to a private school, Rose starts up a crime scene cleanup business “sunshine cleaning”, with her shiftless younger sister Norah (Blunt). But Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley are not really invested in delineating the gory occupational situations (their clients mostly suffer from bereavement caused by suicide), ergo, quiet condoling moments are alternated with lighthearted and foul-smelling scenes of their initial gaucherie for being greenhorns.
In time, the siblings' past tragedy surfaces, which echoes their new profession, both must face the hole left by their deceased mother, and Rose needs to move on from the stagnation with Mac and not feel ashamed to be an underachiever, while Norah should look ahead in life with a more positive spin and be more responsible as a proper adult (a subplot of lesbian experiment is woefully expurgated).
Among the cast, Adams is the prime mover, she seems to enter her character with a preternatural facility, her radiance is undimmed and her congenital likability can hex audience to root for her blindly. As for Blunt, her Norah comes off more opaque and idiosyncratic , but she is bestowed and blessed with that spectacular “trestling” catharsis.
Often compared with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006), let's blame it on Arkin's presence, SUNSHINE CLEANING isn't an effervescent, droll on-the-road family escapade that brims with quirky lines and raw emotions, but a more straight-faced interpersonal drama that dutifully dots the i's and cross the t's to put a life-affirming positiveness on top of accidents and mishaps, it is nothing major in Jeffs and co.'s inventiveness, but eventually everything integrates beautifully without much contrivance . This is a perfect feel-good film doesn't go overboard with sentimentality and tells us something about life itself, in this regard, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE No.2 is right on point.
referential entries: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006, 8.7/10); Bharat Nalluri's MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (2008, 6.7/10).
Title: Sunshine Cleaning
Year: 2008
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish, Mandarin
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Christine Jeffs
Screenwriter: Megan Holley
Music: Michael Penn
Cinematography: John Toon
Editing: Heather Persons
Cast:
Amy Adams
Emily Blunt
Jason Spevack
Alan Arkin
Steve Zahn
Clifton Collins Jr.
Mary Lynn Rajskub
Kevin Chapman
Amy Redford
Paul Dooley
Eric Christian Olsen
Rating: 7.4/10
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