Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

Sunshine Cleaning did not completely win me over. Amy Adams' chief asset is her perkiness and sincerity but here she is a confused and struggling single mom whose career and personal life is a mess (quite literally). She's fallen so low in her dead-end job as a maid and long-time affair with her (married) high-school sweetheart -- we see Steve Zahn's buttocks, we see Amy's breasts -- that she's even seeking a real estate license and mouthing private platitudes such as "I am strong, I am powerful, I am a winner!" Her self-sabotaging sister's life is in even worse shape so the two women grasp at a straw and start a business doing crime-scene cleanup. They quickly learn they can't lowball in such a profession, which requires hazmat suits and biohazard handling certification. (The scenes before they learn these lessons are not anything that will cause you to salivate for more popcorn -- though I ate dinner while watching them.) I have a lot of quibbles with the movie: the acting in klutzy scenes was as forced as in any Diane Keaton movie, several scenes involved pot smoking, a lesbian is encouraged under false pretenses, the young son is brought to suicide and crime-scene cleanups and told to stay in the van or on the front steps (presumably for hours), and so on. Eventually we learn the source of the two sisters' lifelong emotional trauma and I could sympathize with them though just barely. Sunshine Cleaning is so episodic and disjointed that it's hard to get a bead on or give a fig for a given character. (In one scene, the industrial supply rep -- a taciturn amputee -- has been invited to the son's birthday party. Here is the conversation: "So you build model airplanes?" "Yes." "Is there much money in that?" "No." Then it's on to the next bewildering scene.) Alan Arkin as the girls' long-struggling father has a warm and empathetic role and he has the best line: "It's a business lie. It's not the same as a life lie." To tell the truth, I had been hoping for a darker or more comic treatment -- say, Amy Adams as a contract cleaner for the mob. Instead, I found something closer to The Squid and the Whale where no one really knows what they're doing as they bumble along, hoping against hope through all their tragic choices that they will somehow find happiness. It takes watching the entire movie to find out, but Amy's character just might. 3.5 stars.