Messy business

Sunshine Cleaning is a low-key, darkly
comedic drama with a great cast

DIRTY WORK: Sunshine Cleaning

by MALCOLM FRASER

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are poster girls for questionable life choices in Sunshine Cleaning, the Albuquerque-set dark comedy from director Christine Jeffs. Rose (Adams) is a single mom still sleeping with her married ex-boyfriend (Steve Zahn), and her sister Norah (Blunt) is a slacker with bad habits and attitude. The amiably dysfunctional family is rounded out by their father (Alan Arkin), a small-time hustler of grey-market goods, and Adams’ socially maladjusted young son (Jason Spevack). On a tip from detective Zahn, the underemployed sisters start a cleaning business specializing in the scenes of violent crimes and suicides.

The film’s marketers have copiously trumpeted a press blurb claiming it as “the next Juno,” but it’s not a totally apt comparison—Sunshine lacks Juno’s snark and overwritten dialogue, but also its snappy energy. It’s more like a cross between the dysfunctional comedy of Little Miss Sunshine (to which it invites comparison with Arkin’s lovably grumpy presence, not to mention the title) and something Ken Loach might have come up with after an Indie 101 screenwriting seminar. While it traffics in its fair share of boutique-indie clichés, it’s a look at people on the economic margins that’s at once more realistic, and much more gently human, than anything you normally see coming out of Hollywood.

Adams is quite great in the lead—after holding her own with the heavy hitters in Doubt, this should firmly establish her as a serious acting force (and this is coming from someone who’s still psychically scarred by her performance of three songs from Enchanted at last year’s Oscars). Blunt is equally strong as her wild but wounded sister, Arkin is excellent as always, and the rest of the cast is very solid.

Screenwriter Megan Holley employs a few devices that tiptoe on the border of overly cute, and throws in a mid-point plot revelation that strains credulity and lays some of the thematic cards on the table a little too blatantly. But the strong characters (and actors) make these flaws seem minor. Plus, there’s something about the central theme, of Americans scraping together a living by literally cleaning up the messes of their screwed-up society, that make the film tragically appropriate for the times.

SUNSHINE CLEANING OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, MARCH 27