Like they say....life can be messy

Life is a messy business. That’s what the proprietors of Sunshine Cleaning tell their clientele as they tromp through the streets of their town selling anyone who will listen. Similarly, audiences viewing the film Sunshine Cleaning experience something similar. We are told over and over again how sweet, tragic, poignant, and clever this film is before we ever get a chance to let it wash over us. The result in Sunshine Cleaning’s case is a film with strong performances with a well-intentioned director that will fail to resonate with audiences after its over.

The wonderful Amy Adams plays a single mother named Rose Lorkowski. She is working hard to support her son Oscar and unreliable sister (Emily Blunt). Alan Arkin, in a role virtually cut and pasted from his Oscar winning performance in 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine plays the girls’ father who is bent on get-rich quick schemes. It is clear that Rose’s own past has betrayed her. Once the cheerleading beauty queen in high school envied by most of the girls in her class, Rose has become quite discontent. She still sees the quarterback (Steve Zahn) although it is little more than a despondent love affair. Despite her efforts to see the world through the kind of colored glasses her name implies, she can’t help but feel stuck in the direction that life has pushed her. She works day after day for a house cleaning service painfully bumping into old friends who revel in their own financial success, while Rose tries her hardest to convince them she is “more than a maid”, even if she does have little to show for it.

When her son gets expelled from school Rose falls into a plan to make some fast cash. She develops the business “Sunshine Cleaning” in which she is paid to clean up messy crime scenes after the investigators have left. She doesn’t have to deal with bodies as they have already been removed, just the “afterthought” of what happened, which can sometimes be very grisly. Rose soon recruits her sister to join the business and together they begin to enter into the lives of people who have had their world turned upside down by unimaginable tragedy.
There are some genuinely touching scenes in this film, including moments of near brilliance from the Oscar-nominated Adams. There are enough interesting scenes that I am still convinced there is a good film in here somewhere. Instead we are treated to pay-offs that never fully satisfy because we aren’t always emotionally invested, and breaking the golden rule of great movie making” “show don’t tell”

By the film’s end it becomes a story about one of several possible themes: The girls’ own acceptance of death and the ability to move forward, the need for hope, the journey to discover one’s self. I’m not sure it really matters to this director, as long as you pick one that pulls your emotional heart strings the most.

2.5/5