Sunshine Cleaning sounds like a dreary film: a single mother, struggling to make ends meet working as a cleaning lady/waitress who has to pay for a private school 'cuz her kid keeps getting kicked out of public schools. She's having an affair with her (married) high school sweetheart, her sister is an immature and unreliable wreck, and her father is a conniving loser. But to pay for tuition, she goes into business with her sister...enter heart-warming ending and sell it to Lifetime. But it actually works! When you cast the Amy Adams (who can play any kind of role, apparently) as the mom, Emily Blunt as the sister, the hilariously sublte Alan Arkin as the dad,* throw in some wry humor and genuine emotion, it's a charming, and endearing black comedy.Black comedy? Oh yeah, the business they start is a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service. Adams + Blunt + blood/guts/associated smells/stains = Hilarity.
There's actually not as much of that as I expected (even wanted)--that's just the hook to get you into the flick. The real heart of the film is in the sisters learning to trust each other, dealing with death--and helping others to do the same, and in the shadow of death, finding life and hope. Great script, great cast, decent story...well worth your time.
A-
The quietly humorous story of a group of twenty-somethings working at a crummy amusement park in 1987. Our protagonist, James, a new college grad, finds that a family financial crunch leaves him without the means to travel Europe over the summer as he planned. Instead, he has to return to Pittsburgh and get a...job. Of course, the market for comparative lit majors is pretty small (whether or not they're headed to Columbia in the fall for grad school). So he ends up getting a job at the amusement park, thanks to a tip from his former best friend, who apparently lives only to frequently punch James in the testicles.The park is owned by the hilarious married couple played by Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader--who both are a strange combination of cluelessness and skill, callousness and support. But more importantly, the park is staffed by a tight-knit group of kids who return year after year and quickly befriend James. It's not long before James starts seeing Em (Kristen Stewart displaying the talent that probably got her that other role she's known for but didn't get the chance to display). On the one hand, the movie plays out from that point pretty much in the way you'd expect. But it's so skillfully and honestly told, it doesn't matter.
Harry Knowles summed it up better than I could:
This is about that fragile point in a person’s life where they have to come to a realization that they’re not going to be about the dreams you had in High School – that you can’t live at home forever, that you must evolve beyond the plan. And in a very different way, this is that story about the last time you lived at home and that moment that you left knowing it was never going to be the same.
Martin Starr, naturally, threatens to steal the movie, but in the end provides it's heart. Really wish he'd get more work.
As an aside, I'm clearly getting old when Ryan Reynolds is cast as the older mentor-like figure to a college grad. Think Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, only slightly less creepy.
A-
* ...probably shouldn't forget Steve Zahn not playing an obnoxious moron (I knew you had it in you, Steve!)
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