sunshine cleaning movie review

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"Sunshine Cleaning" is a little too sunny for its material. Its heroine, Rose, is a single mom in desperate need of income, trapped in a one-way affair with her high-school beau, who fathered her son but married someone else. Her son is always in trouble at school. Her sister, Norah, is a hard-living goofball. Then Rose starts a new business cleaning up messy crime scenes.

Does this sound sunny to you? The material might have promise as a black comedy, but its attempt to put on a smiling face is unconvincing. That despite the work by Amy Adams as Rose and Emily Blunt as Norah, two effortless charmers who would be terrific playing these characters in a different movie. And Alan Arkin is back, and engaging, in what is coming dangerously close to "the Alan Arkin role." He's their father, Joe, forever hatching get-poor-quick schemes.

Rose is a good mom. She understands her 7-year-old son, Oscar ( Jason Spevack ), who is not really troubled but simply high-spirited. I wonder how many little boys are accused of misbehaving simply because they are -- boys. Why does she still sleep with Mac, the faithless high-school quarterback ( Steve Zahn ) who seduced and abandoned her? She asks herself the same question.

It's Mac who tips her off on a possible business. He's a cop and notices that people get paid well for mopping up after gruesome murders. So is born Rose and Norah's Sunshine Cleaning, which will clean up the rugs and scrape the brains off the wall, etc. This job by its nature allows them to witness the aftermath of lives unexpectedly interrupted; an ID in a dead woman's purse leads them to make an awkward acquaintance.

This is promising material. Gene Siskel loved movies about what people actually do all day. There is even a documentary subject here. But not this film that compromises on everything it implies, because it wants to be cheerful about people who don't have much to be cheerful about. How can you make a feel-good movie about murder-scene clean-ups? "Life's a messy business," the poster says. Yes, and death is messier.

At times, the movie works, but those are the times it (and even we) forget what it's really about. If you could plot it on a curve, it might look like a cross-section of a roller coaster. The poster also evokes " Little Miss Sunshine ," by the same producers, also with Arkin, and the presence of Adams evokes the sublime " Junebug ." Those two movies had more consistent tones and although based on contrivance, felt more natural.

One element does work, and it's off to the side, apart from the rest of the plot. It involves Winston (Clifton Collins Jr.), a one-armed hardware store owner, who baby-sits Oscar in an emergency and provides an oasis of warmth and common sense. You may recall him as Perry in " Capote " (2005). An actor like this works a lot but doesn't always get ideal roles. Now he's beginning to emerge, with seven more films in post-production.

You won't have a bad time seeing this film. You may get a little frustrated waiting for it to take off. It keeps heading down different runways. There's a movie here somewhere. Not this one.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Sunshine Cleaning (2009)

Rated R for language, disturbing images, sexuality and drug use

102 minutes

Amy Adams as Rose

Emily Blunt as Norah

Alan Arkin as Joe

Jason Spevack as Oscar

Steve Zahn as Mac

Directed by

Christine Jeffs
Megan Holly

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Cast & crew
User reviews

Sunshine Cleaning

In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school, a mom starts an unusual business -- a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service -- with her unreliable sister. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school, a mom starts an unusual business -- a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service -- with her unreliable sister. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school, a mom starts an unusual business -- a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service -- with her unreliable sister.

Christine Jeffs
Megan Holley
Emily Blunt
159 User reviews
177 Critic reviews
61 Metascore
2 wins & 6 nominations

Top cast 50

Paula Datzman-Mead

Gun Shop Suicide

Gun Shop Owner
Above and Beyond Worker

Gun Shop Employee #1
Gun Shop Employee #2
(as Clifford R. Garstka Sr.)
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia The filmmakers have said in interviews their story is based on a 2001 National Public Radio "All Things Considered" report about two women in the Seattle suburbs who started a biohazard removal/cleaning service. They are best friends, not sisters.
Goofs When Norah chases after the kitten, there is a small table and a cat statue on the porch. Later, when the house is burning at night, the table and statue are gone. A subsequent scene of the porch in flames has the table and cat statue back again.

Lynn : How'd she die?

Norah : It was sorta a do-it-yourself thing?

Alternate versions Amy Adams brief topless scene has been censored in the US home video releases. Those frames are zoomed in slightly to omit the nudity where as the framing is left intact on releases outside of the US.
Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Race to Witch Mountain/Sunshine Cleaning/The Last House on the Left/Brothers at War (2009)
Soundtracks Cure for This Performed by Golden Smog Written by Marc Perlman Courtesy of Lost Highway Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 159

Apr 7, 2009
How long is Sunshine Cleaning? Powered by Alexa
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April 17, 2009 (United States)
United States
Công Ty Lau Chùi
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Overture Films
Back Lot Pictures
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$8,000,000 (estimated)
$12,062,558
Mar 15, 2009
$16,580,250

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 31 minutes
Dolby Digital

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Sunshine Cleaning Reviews

Relying on a contrast between the bright leads working in grim situations, the story never quite comes together.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 1, 2023

Sunshine Cleaning succeeds because Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, and Alan Arkin are so good at their jobs.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 18, 2023

Oddly whimsical for a dark foray into the humorous side of crime-scene clean-up.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 29, 2020

If you adored Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning will probably charm you too - but only if you have a taste for movies whose dark and bittersweet coating hides a slightly gooey, feel-good soft centre.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2020

A tremendously moving, heartfelt, and humorous film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 24, 2020

Despite it's cloudy undertones, Sunshine Cleaning will bring a ray of sunshine to even the darkest day.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2019

Touching on universally recognisable themes of grief, trust and ambition, all wrapped up in those binding family ties, the film retains an intensely personal focus thanks to its small town setting... and those pitch-perfect performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2019

Another assured and thoroughly enjoyable film from the very talented Christine Jeffs, and well worth a gander.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 29, 2019

Mr. Zahn brings feeling to an often-cliched role, while Mary Lynn Rajskub is moving as a troubled woman who almost connects with the similarly confused Norah.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 10, 2018

This low-key, authentic-feeling drama with touches of comedy stars effervescent Adams, scene-stealing Emily Blunt and reliably crusty Alan Arkin as their dad.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 18, 2018

SunShine Cleaning is a lovely little film that's more gallows than humor.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2017

Filled with touching moments and relatable agony in the midst of financial and personal meltdowns, Blunt and Adams effortlessly portray two characters on the verge of a breakthrough...

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 12, 2017

Sunshine Cleaning a compelling and thoroughly adult picture, boasting an original plot and, in Adams and Blunt, two of the most talented young actresses working today.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2012

[B]leach this one fully out of sight and mind.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/6 | Nov 16, 2011

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, two fine actresses, get the opportunity to glow in strong lead roles as complex, emotionally fractured females who work hard to earn your respect -- and reclaim their own.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2011

New directions in chick flicks: dried arterial blood sprays, maggots, and heart tugs.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2011

Sunshine Cleaning is a decent film, especially if you already like this sort of thing, with a lot of subtlety and a desire to represent actual human beings without demonizing or beatifying any of them.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 30, 2011

Well worth a look for those who aren't too disillusioned with the post-Juno Indie film scene.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2011

Amy Adams sweeps through the wide-ranging role with zest, enthusiasm and just the right touch of simmering self-anger.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 15, 2010

Sunshine Cleaning, like numerous American films at present, independent and commercial alike, flirts with social reality-alternately approaching, veering away from, touching upon and avoiding it.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

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'Sunshine Cleaning': Indie Quirks, By The Bucket

Ella Taylor

Three's Company: A new business venture leads Rose (Amy Adams, right), her son (Jason Spevack), and her sister Norah (Emily Blunt) down a predictably bumpy road. Lacey Terrell/Overture Films hide caption

Three's Company: A new business venture leads Rose (Amy Adams, right), her son (Jason Spevack), and her sister Norah (Emily Blunt) down a predictably bumpy road.

Sunshine Cleaning

Director: Christine Jeffs
Genre: Comedy
Running Time: 102 minutes

Rated: R for some disturbing content

Watch Clips

'I'm Taking Him To Disneyland'

Media no longer available

Source: Overture Films

Helping Mrs. Davis

'I Couldn't Do It Myself'

Reach For It: Alan Arkin reprises a familiar role as the girls' curmudgeonly but good-natured father, a man with a penchant for get-rich-quick schemes. Lacey Terrell/Overture Films hide caption

Reach For It: Alan Arkin reprises a familiar role as the girls' curmudgeonly but good-natured father, a man with a penchant for get-rich-quick schemes.

The Making of a Story

It was an NPR story that inspired Sunshine Cleaning writer Megan Holley. Below, a chat with Holley, and the 2001 story that sparked her imagination.

The Public Radio Roots Of 'Sunshine Cleaning'

All things considered, linda wertheimer: cleaning up after tragedy.

Dripping with market-driven quirkiness, Sunshine Cleaning — a dramedy about two New Mexico sisters struggling to rise above childhood trauma and lumpen apathy — coyly nudges you back to that other Sundance goldmine, Little Miss Sunshine, with which it shares a co-producer (Peter Saraf) and actor Alan Arkin.

Without noticeable shame, Arkin reprises a slightly less profane variant on his warm-hearted Miss Sunshine geezer; here, the character is devoted to beefing up the self-esteem of his equally eccentric grandchild Oscar (Jason Spevack), a freckled sweetheart with the usual gift of annoying school officials while leaning hard on the audience's cute button.

Laden with indie tics — its visual style is generic American outpost grunge, and its lethargic guitar score says "Hands up, sadness is setting in" — Sunshine Cleaning works the heavily trodden blood metaphor to death, from its opening suicide to its heroines' choice of employment: a crime-scene cleanup business that takes the sisters on a journey from quiet desperation to serene self-actualization, plus bucks.

If I've lost you already, come on back. If nothing else, Sunshine Cleaning is a recession-friendly chick-flick; it's blessedly free of shopaholics trawling Manhattan for love and Manolos, and of menopausal broads gallantly doing the splits in spotless fishing towns off the coast of Greece. Think Frozen River, tarted up with down-under irreverence by Kiwi director Christine Jeffs (Sylvia), from a serviceable script by Megan Holley.

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, both equally at home being funny or sad, deserve better than Sunshine Cleaning, but the relish with which they play off one another will strike you as fresh and infectious, even as you mutter to yourself that you've seen these troubled victims countless times before.

Adams, a china doll with a spine of steel, takes center stage as Rose Lorkowski, a former cheerleading star condemned to toil as a maid while sleeping with the married cop she dated in high school (an excellent Steve Zahn) and rescuing Blunt's clueless Norah from ham-fisted efforts to better her own life.

Sunshine Cleaning constantly risks being derailed by the filmmakers' anxious tendency to gild the lily: One wishes that they had passed on the adopted stray kitten, or on the one-armed nice guy (however astutely underplayed by Capote 's Clifton Collins Jr.) who's there to offer a pointed contrast to the other cloddish men clouding the women's horizons. Likewise the sight of Norah rummaging through her dead mother's lovingly preserved cigarette butts and of Rose chatting with the dearly departed through a CB radio, made me cringe.

But if the presence of such a distinguished ensemble underscores the current dearth of roles that do justice to their talents, it also leavens the movie's predictable progression from illusion to self-knowledge with some lovely, unspoken moments that feel less like emotional bullying than the rest: the look of regret mixed with clarifying relief on Rose's face when she confronts her married lover and watches him drive away; the rapture and grief in Norah's eyes when she catches sight of her mother's fleeting brush with fame.

These moments rescue Sunshine Cleaning from its hackneyed ending, which ties up characters, stories and this minor pleasure of a movie into a shiny bow, all to the strains of that lazy-filmmaker anthem "Spirit in the Sky."

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Sunshine cleaning.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 3 Reviews
Kids Say 7 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Adult dramedy has unusual mix of laughs, gore, heavy themes.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

A grown-up explains the meaning of the word "bastard" to a child and (affectiona

A woman smokes pot. Some casual drinking.

A woman is shown trysting with a married man many times; she's usually wearing n

Only one scene actually depicts active violence -- a man commits suicide in publ

Any Positive Content?

Although the movie ultimately has a hopeful message and reinforces the importanc

Despite many flaws, the family members are close, and they see each other throug

A grown-up explains the meaning of the word "bastard" to a child and (affectionately) calls him that. Other words include several uses of "s--t" and "f--k," as well as "bulls--t," "dumbass," damn," "goddamn," and "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A woman is shown trysting with a married man many times; she's usually wearing nothing but her underwear, and they kiss and grope each other. A man is shown grinding on a woman while she lies there, uninterested; he's shirtless, and she is, for the most part, clothed. A woman flirts with another by pretending to bite a necklace she's wearing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Only one scene actually depicts active violence -- a man commits suicide in public by shooting himself with a rifle in the first 15 minutes of the movie. But since the film is about a service for cleaning crime scenes, biohazards, etc., viewers see lots of the after effects of violence, including blood on mattresses, chairs, and other places; bits of brain and other flesh on the floor; and a severed finger. Another scene shows children discovering a woman who's slit her wrists. There are also a few loud fights.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Although the movie ultimately has a hopeful message and reinforces the importance of family ties, it's not exactly straightforward. Characters constantly disappoint each other, and there are many grim themes related to death and loss.

Positive Role Models

Despite many flaws, the family members are close, and they see each other through both ups and downs. But back to those flaws: A single woman continually hooks up with a married man, and another woman fails to honor a work commitment, leaving her sister/business partner to deal with a major accident. A grandfather means well but takes a long time to finally get his act together. Also, a child appears to be having a hard time adjusting to school, and his teachers seem quite harsh.

Parents need to know that this dramedy, in addition to taking on mature themes like suicide and infidelity, is quite gory. The many post-death scenes include disturbing shots of things like pools of blood on ceilings, floors, and walls; human flesh awaiting clean up; and a brief flash of a suicide victim awaiting discovery. There's also lots of talk about death, and the fact that the adult characters are unable to find direction till the end clearly affects the one child in their midst. All of that said, the movie does have a lot of heart and, in the end, a hopeful message. But to get to the uplift, viewers have to endure a pretty grueling journey. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (3)
Kids say (7)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Bad for kids and a waste for adults!!!

What's the story.

Rose Lorkowski's ( Amy Adams ) glory days of cheerleading are long behind her, replaced by a job as a cleaning lady. Her son, Oscar (Jason Spevack), has been kicked out of yet another public school; her father ( Alan Arkin ) still can't get rich quick despite all his schemes. And her sister, Norah ( Emily Blunt ), just lost her waitressing job. Eager for a real career, Rose convinces Norah to help her start a business cleaning crime scenes -- Rose's high school boyfriend ( Steve Zahn ), a married cop with whom she's having an affair, has told her it pays so much more than regular housekeeping (enough for private school, perhaps). And for a moment, it seems sweeping up the blood and gore of lives gone awry is Rose's answer to a better life. But a clean slate isn't what's in store for her after all. Not unless she and her sister finally cleanse themselves of a haunting family heartbreak.

Is It Any Good?

Quirky and affecting, SUNSHINE CLEANING is a lovely dramedy bolstered by extraordinary performances. As she's done with previous roles as a nun and a real-life Disney princess, Adams brings loads of warmth and empathy to her role. And in Blunt -- who has the rare gift of being able to marry humor and sorry with ease -- she has a formidable partner-in-crime. Rounding out the main cast in a role that harkens back to Little Miss Sunshine (the two movies have the same producers), Arkin cements his place in celluloid history as the patron saint of flawed-but-loving grandfathers. They're damaged, but you feel for them nonetheless.

But here's the rub (or should we say scrub?): Sunshine Cleaning feels painstakingly put together and a bit contrived. Though director Christine Jeffs doesn't reveal the psychological scars branded on the family's psyche until almost the end, she hints at them a little too heavily (the slo-mo flashbacks, the gray visual palette, the mishaps -- and there are many!). And must everyone be so idiosyncratic? Even the former high school classmates Rose runs into at a baby shower seem larded with spite. Still, as blemishes go, these are hardly deal breakers. The film's loudly beating heart and strong performances will wash the doubts away.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether the movie's scenes of blood and gore have more impact because it's a comedy rather than a horror movie. Are these scenes scary, disturbing, neither, or both?

Families can also discuss the characters' search for a way out of their present condition. What drives them?

Though the central family is clearly dysfunctional, what's positive about their relationships? What is it about families that make them drive each other crazy but give each other hope, too?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 13, 2009
On DVD or streaming : August 25, 2009
Cast : Alan Arkin , Amy Adams , Emily Blunt
Director : Christine Jeffs
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Overture Films
Genre : Comedy
Run time : 102 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : language, disturbing images, some sexuality and drug use
Last updated : January 3, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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DVD & Streaming

Sunshine Cleaning

Comedy , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

Amy Adams as Rose Lorkowski; Emily Blunt as Norah Lorkowski; Jason Spevack as Oscar Lorkowski; Alan Arkin as Joe Lorkowski; Steve Zahn as Mac; Clifton Collins Jr. as Winston

Home Release Date

Christine Jeffs

Distributor

Overture Films

Movie Review

It wasn’t all that long ago that Rose Lorkowski’s life was the envy of all her friends. She was popular, the captain of her high school cheerleading squad and dating the team’s quarterback. But somehow, after graduation, all the happily-ever-afters were trampled underfoot by a bunch of bad breaks and poor choices.

Now she’s a single mom struggling to stay afloat as an underpaid maid. She really wants to improve her lot. But all the free time she has is spent either raising Oscar—her trouble-seeking missile of a 7-year-old—or running off to cheap motel rooms for unfulfilling trysts with a married man. (Seems those poor choices are still a problem.)

But then Oscar’s shenanigans get him kicked out of school and Rose decides a private education is the best thing for him. So the strapped-for-cash mom has to make some big changes—quick. Luckily, she gets a tip on a potentially lucrative profession from her (married) cop boyfriend, Mac. It’s cleanup work. Not all that different from what she’s doing now, Mac assures her. Only in this case she’ll be cleaning up the biohazard mess of recently vacated crime scenes. Well, maybe it’s a little different.

Rose needs a partner so she approaches her underachieving sister, Norah, with the idea. It’s not as fun as, say, writing movie reviews for a living, but the money’s good and Norah’s currently out of work and living at their dad’s house. So why not?

OK, now where was that Reader’s Digest article about how to get blood out of … everything?

Positive Elements

Rose is a very likable individual who works hard and tries to stay optimistic, no matter her situation. She loves her son and is ready to protect him. (She doesn’t always know how to do that, but she still tries.) It’s Oscar’s need to attend private school that motivates her to reexamine her career and relational choices. And she readily steps up to take responsibility for her own less-than-wise actions. She even assumes responsibility for the fall-out from one of Norah’s big mistakes.

After Rose and Norah start Sunshine Cleaning, they quickly come to realize that their job will include comforting those who have lost loved ones. They both find a sense of fulfillment in doing so. In fact, the crime cleanup job draws the two sisters together and ultimately helps them both find a self-confidence that they had not possessed beforehand. Rose’s dad makes a self-sacrificial choice to help support his daughter.

Spiritual Elements

When the Lorkowski sisters buy a used van for their business, the salesman tells Oscar that the CB system can send his words “straight up to the heavens.” Oscar takes this literally and later turns on the CB to ask God questions about life and death. Rose uses the CB, too, to “talk” to her deceased mother. She tells her mom—who committed suicide when the girls were young—that it was “too bad” that she missed “some really great stuff” because of her choice.

Another suicide victim’s bedroom has a number of crosses and crucifixes hanging on one wall. A small Buddha and incense paraphernalia are scattered about on someone else’s dresser.

Sexual Content

Rose and Mac meet several times at a motel. We see them before or after sex as they hug, kiss and touch. Rose is usually dressed only in bra and panties. She straddles Mac in one scene. And she’s putting on her bra in another. The camera shows Mac’s bare backside as he pulls up his underwear.

In a scene that includes explicit motions, another man has sex with a mostly clothed Norah. Bored, she brusquely stops him when she sees a news report of a crime on TV.

Norah tracks down a woman named Lynn to give her some pictures she found in the room in which Lynn’s mother died. Instead, the two strike up an awkward friendship that leads to a couple of “dates.” It’s never clear that Norah wants anything more from Lynn than friendship—but Lynn certainly does. And at a club, she slowly nibbles from Norah’s candy necklace, nuzzling at her neck. Lynn later states that she thought Norah was “interested” in her.

Rose and Norah both wear form-fitting and/or low-cut tops. Bikini-clad girls populate a pool party. Other women sport cleavage-revealing tops. Crass sexual language punctuates one of the sisters’ conversations.

Violent Content

For a dark comedy about cleaning up after murders and suicides, Sunshine Cleaning can be given credit for a modicum of restraint. In other words, it could have pushed things a lot farther than it did within its R rating. We see a bathroom covered in blood spray. There’s a severed finger in a sink. A number of blood pools dot different floor surfaces. Blood has soaked into spots on a mattress and a lounge chair. (Norah falls face-first onto that stained mattress.) Stains and spatters are also visible on several walls, Rose’s and Norah’s gloves and protective wear, and on a man’s neck.

Rose and Norah, as children, find their dead mother, with slashed wrists, in a bloody bathtub.

The most visually violent scene occurs at the beginning of the film when a man puts a shotgun under his chin and pulls the trigger. We hear the gun’s report but don’t see the shot’s impact. Then we sit though a series of jokes made about parts of his body splashing down all over the store.

A house burns down.

Crude or Profane Language

About 15 f-words and at least that many s-words. God’s and Jesus’ names are misused over a dozen times. God’s is combined with “d–n.” Also showing up: “a–” and “b–tard.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Norah drinks a beer and smokes what looks like a joint while babysitting. Later, as if to erase doubt about what she was toking, she gets high at a party. Lynn, who says her mom was a “pathetic drunk,” tells Norah she doesn’t drink or do drugs because it “weakens you psychically.” To which a visibly stoned Norah retorts, “You should probably just tell people you’re Mormon.”

People drink at a bar. Champagne appears at a baby shower. Norah carries several cans of beer while walking with Lynn. Rose is said to have been a smoker, and we see her put a nicotine patch on her arm after sex.

Other Negative Elements

Throughout the movie the adult Lorkowskis tend to teach young Oscar some rather negative lessons. For example, Norah tells him scary bedtime stories (after Rose had asked her not to) which keep him awake at night and then motivate him to act out at school. (It’s reported that he’s licking things, including the teacher’s leg.) When the principal essentially expels Oscar, Rose tells her boy that he’s done nothing wrong and blames the whole incident on the school. “It’s not you, Oscar,” she tells him. “It’s them.” Grandpa Joe reinforces that assessment and warns Oscar that they want to put him in the “retard” class.

Desperate to go to a baby shower hosted by an old classmate, Rose leaves the 7-year-old boy with a relative stranger at a cleaning supply store. Norah coaxes her nephew to celebrate his out-of-wedlock birth and buys him a fake tattoo that reads, “Lil B–tard.”

To get their first job, Rose fibs about how long she and Norah have been doing biohazard cleanups. And when her dad has a sign printed up that trumpets “since 1963,” she and he laugh it off as a “business” lie. “It’s not the same as a life lie,” he says.

Norah introduces Lynn to “trestling,” an adrenaline-inducing activity that involves climbing up underneath a railroad trestle and getting as close to the thundering train above as possible without getting hit. (Of some mitigating merit is the fact that the movie clearly shows us that Norah goes trestling to try to momentarily rip away the pain of her life—especially her mother’s suicide.)

There’s a new movie template that’s making the Hollywood rounds. It plays out as a quirky little comedic story of a foul-mouthed, dysfunctional, middle-American family striving to find its place in an offbeat world. That formula got a big boost a few years back with the box office success and Oscar nomination of R-rated indie pic Little Miss Sunshine. Now that film’s producers are back, seeking cinematic gold once again with Sunshine Cleaning.

There’s no denying that there are some engaging bits of human drama lurking in this story, along with a few solid messages affirming the value of life, the support of families and individual perseverance. You quickly find yourself rooting for the ever-hopeful Rose as she tries to throw off the painful baggage of her past and make a better life for herself and her son. And as odd as the splintered Lorkowski family can sometimes be, it’s easy to like the rest of its members, too. You want to see them find the familial strength and love that will help overcome their challenges.

But digging down to those dramatic nuggets can be slowgoing, and in some ways as messy as one of Rose’s crime scene cleanups. Sunshine Cleaning ‘s dialogue isn’t, um, clean . And illicit sexuality is paraded around in various stages of undress. Some of it is there to make a serious point about Rose’s journey out of self-loathing into a semblance of self-assuredness. (She does, after all, finally end the affair with Mac.) But some of it is just there for R-rated indie-film showmanship.

You could say that beyond its devotion to delivering characters consumed by idiosyncrasies—and its obvious sister-sister bonding— Sunshine Cleaning is really about people searching for God while trying to make sense of their lives. Norah desperately tries to find Him at the trestle, telling Lynn that the train is like a “big, p—ed off god and he’s right up in your face like screaming at you, you know. He’s so close you can smell the metal on his breath.”

Rose has been trying to find Him by clinging to her popular-girl past. Which means maintaining an ongoing relationship with her high school beau—who just so happens to be married to somebody else.

Oscar gazes heavenward and tries to talk to God on a broken CB. “Where was I before I was born?” he asks. “Where do you go when you die?”

God’s nowhere to be found, though. The CB never crackles to life—either literally or figuratively. Light filters through a few cracks in the cinematic ceiling. But the sun never really shines.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Sunshine Cleaning Review

26 Jun 2009

Sunshine Cleaning

From the producers of Little Miss Sunshine, another family story of people whose expectations of life have not been met, but still they keep hoping. A beguiling Amy Adams is single mom and cleaner Rose, who starts a crime-scene clean-up business with her screw-up sister (Emily Blunt). Rose rediscovers her self-esteem and both siblings become emotionally involved in the lives and deaths of the messily deceased while dreaming, scheming Grandpa (Alan Arkin, whose wacky-old-coot shtick still has traction) babysits.

The blackly comic potential in the screenplay is frittered away, but terrific performances make the most of the turning-your-life-around dramedy

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(CNN) -- More timely now than when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, "Sunshine Cleaning," an agreeable, midrange independent film, makes light work of heavy burdens.

Amy Adams gets to work cleaning up as Rose in the indie comedy "Sunshine Cleaning."

Sisters Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt) struggle with menial jobs and periods of unemployment. Together, they're also coping with the nasty emotional residue of their mom's long-ago suicide -- a trauma that is likely responsible for their current troubles. Self-esteem isn't a strong suit for either of them.

As "Sunshine Cleaning" dawns, they're both scraping by. If Norah is out of work before we've settled into our popcorn, she's not overly concerned by her situation. Rose, on the other hand, is desperate to graduate from cleaning other people's middle-class homes. It's not just that the humiliation of laundering for her old cheerleader team is getting her down; she needs the money to put her "difficult" kid (Jason Spevack) into the kind of school that will give him a chance.

It's Rose's married boyfriend -- and old high school sweetheart -- Mac (Steve Zahn) who spies a new niche for the sisters. A homicide detective, he's watching the cleaning crew bag the blown brains of a shotgun enthusiast when he overhears the proprietor of the building grousing about the "three grand" it's costing him. Granted, blood and intestinal juices aren't everybody's cup of tea, but that kind of return sure beats washing Mrs. Johansson's drapes for $30 an hour.

"CSM: Crime Scene Maid" isn't a job you're likely to find down at the employment office, but somebody must be doing the dirty work. Rose and Norah -- incorporated -- find that the stench takes some getting used to, and there's a whole new arsenal of cleaning fluids to master, but they get to work with a positive attitude and like to think they're doing their bit to put the world right.

Oscar nomination called 'surreal' experience

From this unusual setup, the movie might have skewed in any number of ways. The sisters might have uncovered evidence of corruption and murder, for instance, perhaps implicating Mac?

"Sunshine Cleaning" is nowhere near so abrasive or generic as such a scenario. Written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs ("Sylvia"), it instead puts a sympathetic, gentle comic gloss on the characters' fundamentally forgivable foibles and imperfections.

Norah tracks down the daughter of one suicide (Mary Lynn Rajskub) to present her with mementos that should have been destined for the junkyard.

Blunt's edgy performance keeps us guessing. Norah's a bit of a flake, but she's animated by her anger and her rebellious streak. If she's hard to read, it's because she's still young and doesn't know herself yet.

Rose is easier to understand. She's determined to seize this chance to dig herself out of the hole and recapture the promise she used to see in herself. Adams has a knack for putting a brave face on things -- something about the way she tilts her chin up while her mouth goes in three directions at once. She keeps our rooting interest in Rose alive even when her choices seem misguided or naive.

A subplot concerning Rose's son bonding with Joe (Alan Arkin), the sisters' lovable but infuriating father (you know the kind: He buys bulk orders of shrimp off the back of a truck) tips us too far into the realm of indie quirk. The character is a useful sounding board, and an amusing grouch, but it's just about impossible to imagine this man bringing up these girls.

Ironically, for a movie that's marketed with the one-liner "Life's a messy business," Holley's script has been polished to within an inch of its life. Emotions are experienced most vividly when they're raw, but in "Sunshine Cleaning," feelings come filtered through neat-and-tidy grace notes. The film flirts with dangerous material, but it's too intent on putting the sunny side up to get its hands dirty. The way director Jeffs tells it, not only is suicide painless it can be positively feel-good.

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Movie Review: Sunshine Cleaning - The Power Of Amy Adams

What happens to crime scenes after the dead bodies have been taken to the morgue and the detectives have gone home? How do the business owners, homeowners, and regular, everyday people carry on with their lives after they've been touched by gruesomeness and tragedy? Before any mourning or coping can take place, step one is to hire someone to clean up the mess. Christine Jeffs' Sunshine Cleaning tries to take us behind the lives of one woman's quest to clean up in places where the unspeakable has happened. But does it deliver us a satisfying and darkly comic tale of crime scene sanitation?

Rose Lorkowski ( Amy Adams ) is a single mother who is under way too much stress. Her job as a maid for a cleaning company leaves her in a constant state of self-loathing. Her son, Oscar ( Jason Spevack ), can't stay out of trouble in school. Her sister, Norah ( Emily Blunt ) can't hold down a steady job and has a tough relationship with their father Joe ( Alan Arkin ). Meanwhile, Mac, the married man she's having an affair with ( Steve Zahn ), can't seem to give her the emotional satisfaction she desires. When Oscar's latest antics land him in trouble with the school principal, Rose resolves to figure out a way to put Oscar through private school rather than see him relegated to a program for "special" kids. She enlists the help of Mac to hook her and Norah up with some lucrative crime scene cleaning gigs. As one gig leads to another, she begins to realize the profit potential for the entire enterprise, leading her to start her own company, Sunshine Cleaning.

There's a lot of promise in the premise for Sunshine Cleaning . Certainly, a great deal of dark comedy can be mined from the circumstances, and the film presents a decent slate of quirky characters (e.g. the one-armed vacuum salesman, the cranky old man who has a shrimp-selling scheme) through whom it can portray satisfying character arcs. Sadly, Sunshine Cleaning defies convention, seemingly just for the sake of it. It never decides what kind of film it wants to be and ends up a narrative mess.

Let's start with the impetus for the creation of the Sunshine Cleaning company in the first place: Oscar's school trouble. We are led to believe that Rose's financial situation is rather dire, and that Sunshine Cleaning spawns out of necessity. But, except for a brief shot of Rose filling out a school application later in the film, this plotline never resurfaces, sapping the movie of some much-needed narrative tension (e.g. "Will Rose be able to put together the business in time to help her son?"). Theoretically, we are meant to understand that Rose ends up enjoying the work for its own sake, but aside from one brief encounter between Rose and one of her clients' widows, this thread also fails to satisfyingly come to fruition. While the film starts off with the potential to have some compelling Six Feet Under -caliber drama, that potential is never fulfilled.

About thirty minutes into the film, I thought I finally grasped what the film was trying to do, providing us with three parallel storylines: Rose's quest to make Sunshine Cleaning successful, Norah's mission to track down one of her clients' daughters, and Joe's bizarre shrimp business. But the film veers wildly between these three plotlines and struggles to find a balance that makes us care about each of the characters and their situational outcomes. Effective emotional moments fail to resonate because they lack any narrative direction. And the dialogue meant to establish some of the relationships (e.g. the one between Norah and Lynn, the latter of whom is played by Mary Lynn Rajskub) comes off as clunky, amateurish, and implausible.

None of this can be laid at the door of the director, Christine Jeffs, who valiantly manages to make the most out of scene after scene (and to a large extent, succeeds). The problem is solely with first-time screenwriter Megan Holley's script. Characters and situations drift haphazardly in and out of the film as needed for the scene at hand, and the film's handling of one crucial past tragic event in Rose and Norah's life is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.

The one element that single-handedly saves this film from the abyss is a tremendous performance by Amy Adams. Continuing to prove that she is one of the best actresses of our generation, Adams' Rose is utterly convincing as she struggles with deep issues of self-confidence. Rose is by turns pitiful, courageous, and tender, and is one of the few people in this film that feels like a fully-formed emotional being. Adams makes you feel every ounce of Rose's wasted potential and profound shame at her station in life. It's a testament to Adams' skills that despite Rose's considerable problems, you can't help but fall in love with her.

As a side note, I'm not terribly familiar with Emily Blunt's work, but I thought she was strangely magnetic as the family's black sheep. She portrays Norah with just the right amount of indifference, but enough tenderness to make you care (although to be fair, the way her storyline was resolved left me with a big "WTF?")

About two-thirds of the way through the film, Adams delivers a short monologue, explaining her motivation for (and her satisfaction derived from) running Sunshine Cleaning. "We come into people's lives when they've experienced something profound," she says. "And we help. In some small way, we help." Unfortunately, Sunshine Cleaning never really makes us feel Adams' satisfaction at doing her job; the monologue is not earned. In fact, were it not for the fine work of Adams, the film's messy storytelling would barely have the ability to make us feel anything but frustration.

/Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10 Discuss: What did you think of Sunshine Cleaning? David Chen can be reached at davechensemail(AT)gmail(DOT)com. You can also follow him on Twitter or Tumblr .

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Sunshine cleaning.

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are two highly attractive, naturally funny actresses on the cusp of stardom so their pairing in "Sunshine Cleaning" as two lost souls is genius. With the right marketing and promotion, a considerable audience over 25 could discover and appreciate this Sundance Dramatic Competition entry.

By Kirk Honeycutt , The Associated Press January 19, 2008 8:00pm

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Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY — The idea behind “Sunshine Cleaning” — two sisters seize a big opportunity in the crime-scene cleaning and bio-hazard removal business — sounds like a swell opportunity for a black comedy. But New Zealand-born director Christine Jeffs (“Sylvia”) and writer Megan Holly have other ideas. This admittedly odd business becomes instead a springboard for exploring issues of self-worth, loneliness, healing and acceptance. It’s still a comedy, yet maybe more a gray than a black one.

The Bottom Line Empty

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are two highly attractive, naturally funny actresses on the cusp of stardom so their pairing here as two lost souls is genius. With the right marketing and promotion, a considerable audience over 25 could discover and appreciate this Sundance Dramatic Competition entry.

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What it's about

Sunshine Cleaning is a great addition to that unidentified genre of grown-up comedies populated by other great entries like Your Sister's Sister and Enough Said . It is however, less of a comedy than it is a heart-warming emotional tale. Powered by outstanding performances from Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, it ultimately evolves into a character study of failed potential and validation seeking. Sunshine Cleaning is enjoyable, satisfying to a fault, and provides an interesting peak into the lives of its characters.

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Sunshine Cleaning

Review by brian eggert april 5, 2009.

Sunshine Cleaning should be a surefire pseudo-indie hit. At least, that’s what the producers assumed when they wrangled the A-list cast together for this intentionally offbeat dramedy, which tries entirely too hard to be profound. Relying on a contrast between the bright leads working in grim situations, the story never quite comes together. There’s no substance beyond the obvious metaphor at the center. What the film lacks in congealed storytelling, however, it makes up for in casting.

Amy Adams foregoes her frequent childlike innocence from Junebug and Enchanted and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day to play Rose, a single mother who cleans houses for a living but dreams of being a real estate agent. Her adolescent son Oscar (Jason Spevack) is removed from public school for having “special needs,” but really, he’s just eccentric—occasionally he licks things, like his teacher. Rose is having an affair with her high school sweetheart-turned-cop, Mac (Steve Zahn), who picked his other high school sweetheart to marry over her. He thinks she should start her own business, and suggests the “lucrative” field of biohazard cleanup.

You’ve probably heard of such work on your favorite crime scene investigation program, where technicians come along after the police are through to clean up bits of blood and other bodily fluids when messy accidents and murders occur. Along with her irresponsible sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), Rose buys some cleaning products and thinks a little disinfectant will do the trick. She’s later shown the ropes by one-armed cleaning products store owner Winston (Clifton Collins Jr.), who informs her she needs several certifications before she can begin this work. But Rose needs money for Oscar’s private school, so she applies for the necessary documents but continues to accept jobs anyway. While she’s cleaning up after deaths abound, Oscar is left with Grandpa Jo (Alan Arkin), who embraces the boy’s imagination and teaches him the potential of get-rich-schemes.

Everyone in the movie carries melancholy. Oscar asks heavy questions about life and death, ones too deep for a 7-year-old. The sisters struggle to function through the blood and rotten smells, forcing them to remember the suicide of their mother. Rose tries to stop caring about what other people think of her. She slowly finds herself happy in cleaning up after other people’s misfortunes and in helping to bring order to someone else’s life, though she can’t seem to bring order to her own. And Norah works out her latent mommy issues after finding a driver’s license in a dead woman’s fanny pack; she seeks out the woman’s daughter for reasons even she doesn’t understand.

Though the entire cast is comprised of likable actors in likable roles, one wonders where an aloof film like this would be without Alan Arkin? He carbon copies his rascally grandpa role from Little Miss Sunshine , tones it down to exclude drugs and porno, and presents a lovable character that steals the show. Familiar though his performance may be, his presence lightens the entire load, offering a blind optimism for his costars to feed from. Indeed, the other characters might be intolerable if not for Arkin quipping in his crusty grandpa way.

Each character has their own involved backstory; if and how the stories work out is another matter entirely. There’s possibly a romantic spark between Rose and Winston that’s never addressed. The intentions behind Norah’s arc are unclear at best. Where is Oscar’s father? We never know; that might be important, at least for Oscar. Deciding what this movie is about and waiting for it to come together plagues the audience until the end credits roll, at which point we feel betrayed by the ineffectual sense of closure. Watching the film and affable stars onscreen proves lightly entertaining, but too many questions arise when it’s over. The posters punctuate the meaning: “Life’s a messy business.” That thin explanation isn’t nearly enough.

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Sunshine Cleaning

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Don’t be scammed by the “sunshine” in the title. More than a few dark clouds roll through this tale of two sisters, played with comic zest and quiet desperation by Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, who decide to make a living by cleaning up crime scenes in their native New Mexico. Need to wipe guts and viscera off your walls? Call Rose (Adams) and Norah (Blunt). Former high school prom queen Rose, a single mom raising a precocious seven-year-old (Jason Spevack), is stuck in life and in a shabby affair with a married cop (Steve Zahn, reliably excellent). Norah lives with their cranky widower dad (Alan Arkin, reliably Arkin) and yells out her frustrations in screaming contests with trains. Why not earn fuck-you money by wiping blood off walls? It may be a ticket out.

Sunshine Cleaning (the name Rose puts on their truck) comes from the producers who struck gold with Little Miss Sunshine . So the title and the presence of the Oscar-winning Arkin playing another lovable geezer opposite a cute little Mr. might seem like a premature return to the well. Hang on. New Zealand’s Christine Jeffs, who directed Gwyneth Paltrow in Sylvia , shapes the script, by newcomer Megan Holly, into something with its own scrappy integrity. Rose and Norah are damaged goods, scarred by their mother’s suicide, though they rarely speak of it. This funny and touching movie depends on two can-do actresses to scrub past the biohazard of noxious clichÃ©s that threaten to intrude. Adams and Blunt get the job done. They come highly recommended.

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Movie Review | 'Sunshine Cleaning'

Bonding Amid Blood Splatters: Two Sisters and Their Messy Lives

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By A.O. Scott

March 12, 2009

I’m thinking of a movie. Wait, don’t tell me, it’s on the tip of my tongue. It takes place in Albuquerque. There’s a beat-up old van, a lot of family dysfunction, a cute kid, a get-rich-quick scheme that doesn’t quite work out as planned. Alan Arkin is the grandpa. The title? Something about “Sunshine.”

No, not that one. “Little Miss Sunshine” came out in 2006. Why on earth would I be reviewing it now? I’m wondering that myself. A better title for the movie I am supposed to review for the record, it’s “Sunshine Cleaning,” directed by Christine Jeffs from a script by Megan Holley would be “Sundance Recycling,” since the picture is less a free-standing independent film than a scrap-metal robot built after a shopping spree at the Park City Indie Parts and Salvage Warehouse.

I don’t just mean that aspects of the setting, characters and plot seem awfully familiar (and, in a few cases, familiarly awful). The deeper problem is an overall confusion of tone, mood and genre, a breathless incoherence that comes from the effort to jam too many disparate elements together. In one scene you think you’re in a gritty little regional-realist drama, which gives way to a quirky comedy about adorable eccentrics and then swerves abruptly through psychological melodrama on its way to a cheery, tidy ending.

If, from one of these stuck-together moments to the next, “Sunshine Cleaning” sometimes seems better than it is, that is largely because Ms. Jeffs (“Rain,” “Sylvia”) has a good touch with actors and a very good cast. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, playing sisters who go into business together, attack their roles with vivacity and dedication, even if the roles themselves don’t entirely make sense.

Ms. Adams, with her tremulous smile and her usual beguiling mixture of fragility and pluck, is Rose, a single mother whose life is a daily struggle with disappointment and humiliation. Though she dreams of getting her real-estate license perhaps a more seductive dream when the movie was made than it is now she scratches out a living cleaning houses and hotel rooms. She’s having an affair with Mac (Steve Zahn), her high school boyfriend he was a football star, she was a cheerleader who married someone else and works as a police detective. Her son, Oscar (Jason Spevack), is always getting in trouble at school, and her dad (Mr. Arkin, naturally) is an erratic and sometimes troublesome, though generally well-intentioned, old coot.

But Rose, whose recitations of self-help mantras as she looks in the mirror make her a target for the kind of condescension that can play as satire or pity, is by far the more stable of the two sisters. The other, Norah (Ms. Blunt), is the cool, wayward one, who has tattoos on her wrist, bad sex with a guy at a party, and a fondness for telling Oscar scary bedtime stories when she goes over to Rose’s to baby-sit. She also does a bit of stalking, which gives the film a chance to use the wonderful Mary Lynn Rajskub, rather unimaginatively, as yet another faux-provincial American oddball.

It is not enough for the sisters to have oil-and-water temperaments that make their painful quarrels and comic spats inevitable. There needs to be a childhood trauma to inject a little more pathos into their relationship, and to this end the filmmakers supply a dead mother, whose suicide continues to haunt Rose and Norah. Except when it doesn’t: Rose is perfectly happy to make a flippant joke about suicide in one scene, only to howl in undimmed rage and grief a short while later.

“Sunshine Cleaning” is too busy to notice such inconsistencies. Rose and Norah busy themselves with a ghoulishly comical, gratingly improbable new enterprise, which is cleaning up crime scenes. This job allows the film to dabble in cheap, grisly sight gags and also in gratuitous throat-lumping. It’s the human comedy! It’s the human tragedy! It’s love and family and sisterhood and second chances and picking yourself up and dusting yourself off and making lemonade out of lemons. It’s a kindly, one-armed cleaning-supply salesman with wry wisdom, quiet patience, a scraggly ponytail and an endearing hobby. He builds models.

Really, though, “Sunshine Cleaning” is none of those things, apart from the cleaning-supply salesman, played by Clifton Collins Jr. He’s real, which is to say he’s as phony as everything else in the movie. All in all, it’s a mess, and much as Ms. Blunt pouts, Ms. Adams twinkles, and Mr. Arkin growls, there’s nothing they can do to clean it up.

“Sunshine Cleaning” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sex, swearing, drug use and scenes depicting the bloody aftermath of violent acts.

SUNSHINE CLEANING

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Christine Jeffs; written by Megan Holley; director of photography, John Toon; edited by Heather Persons; production designer, Joseph T. Garrity; produced by Glenn Williamson, Jeb Brody, Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf; released by Overture Films. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes.

WITH: Amy Adams (Rose Lorkowski), Emily Blunt (Norah Lorkowski), Alan Arkin (Joe Lorkowski), Jason Spevack (Oscar Lorkowski), Steve Zahn (Mac), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Lynn) and Clifton Collins Jr. (Winston).

SUNSHINE CLEANING

"redemption through suffering".

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

(C, B, CapCap, PaPa, Ro, Ho, LLL, VV, SS, N, AA, DD, MM) Light Christian, redemptive worldview with some strong capitalist content, marred by some strong pagan elements and some light Romantic elements, including strong foul language, sexual references and lying as people struggle with their sinfulness, plus brief homosexual references in a subplot; 36 obscenities (including many “f” words), five strong profanities and eight light profanities, plus crude jokes about child’s illegitimate birth out of wedlock; strong, sometimes bloody images of aftermaths of violence as people commit suicide, are killed or die accidentally, plus car crashes through store window and a house burns down; depicted fornication in one scene, implied adultery, lesbian hugs another woman closely; rear male nudity, upper male nudity, and woman shown in bra a couple times or so; alcohol use and drunkenness; smoking and marijuana use; and, lying justified.

More Detail:

SUNSHINE CLEANING is a dark slice-of-life comedy about an unmarried mother and her quirky sister struggling to earn a living while overcoming their sinfulness and a heartbreaking family secret. The movie’s inspiring, uplifting and insightful moments don’t completely overcome its offensive elements.

The movie stars Amy Adams of ENCHANTED as Rose Lorkowski, a 33-year-old single mother working as a maid. Rose’s younger sister, Norah (played by Emily Blunt), has trouble keeping a job and is still living with their father, Joe (played by Alan Arkin), a salesman with a history of ill-fated sales schemes.

Rose’s married lover and high school sweetheart, Mac, a police detective, suggests to Rose that she go into the lucrative crime cleanup business. Rose cajoles Norah into helping her. Ironically, the messy business of cleaning up after suicides, murders and other corpses gives both sisters feelings of self-worth they never had. Challenges arise along the way, however. This pushes them to confront the personal problems and family secrets that have left them wounded and alienated from one another.

SUNSHINE CLEANING is a funny, insightful character study of two sympathetic losers. The cast, led by Amy Adams, seems to be having a lot of fun with their characters, but they know when to underscore the script’s dramatic highpoints. The story ends on a light, redemptive note that includes some positive, overt Christian references. In fact, the two sisters seem to find redemption through the suffering and comic misadventures their characters endure. Before that, however, the movie contains plenty of strong foul language, sexual references, some lying, marijuana use in one scene, and other mature subject matter (see the CONTENT section above for a summary). The movie’s redemptive aspects are poignant, but its adult content requires extreme caution.

Sunshine Cleaning (United States, 2008)

There has been much discussion and debate recently about the simplistic and juvenile handling of characters in female-oriented motion pictures, with perhaps Confessions of a Shopaholic being the poster child for what's wrong with many of these movies. Fortunately, there are some counterexamples, and Sunshine Cleaning represents one. Although not a perfect film - some of the shifts from comedy to drama are abrupt and awkward and the ending has an "unfinished" feel - Christine Jeff's production treats its protagonists like people, not caricatures, and that makes all the difference when it comes to identifying with these individuals.

Sunshine Cleaning starts out as a comedy before gradually re-forming into something darker and even a little tragic. The laughs don't disappear altogether, but they become less overt and frequent, and a layer of quiet despair bubbles to the surface. The main characters are two twenty-something sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt). Less than a decade ago, Rose was the high school cheerleader every girl wanted to be and every guy wanted to be with. Now, she's a single mom who works as a housecleaner to support herself and her seven-year-old son, Oscar (Jason Spevack). Her old boyfriend, Mac (Steve Zahn), married another woman but still enjoys regular motel dalliances with Rose. Meanwhile, the younger Norah still lives with her dad, Joe (Alan Arkin), and evidences neither the capacity nor the enthusiasm to hold a job. She drifts from one part-time position to the next, redefining "reliable" as "when it suits her." When Rose, needing more money than her current employment provides, goes looking for something more lucrative, Mac makes a suggestion: cleaning crime scenes and removing biohazards. The work may be a little gross, but it pays well. So, after a little reluctance, Rose buys into the idea and recruits Norah, and they embark upon a non-traditional janitorial career.

While this may sound like a suitably screwball premise, Sunshine Cleaning has some serious points to make. To this day, the women are haunted by the suicide of their mother, and their decision to clean up the debris of wasted lives stirs unwelcome memories. Both Rose and Norah sense that they're walking over someone's grave, and each copes with it differently. In one scene, Rose comforts an elderly woman whose husband has killed himself. There's also a subplot in which Norah tracks down the daughter ( 24 's Mary Lynn Rajskub) of a dead woman whose house she sanitized. Meanwhile, upon meeting an old high school classmate, Rose is forced to deal with the undeniable truth that the kind of popularity she once enjoyed ended once the diplomas were handed out. Mac is using her for sex; he's never going to leave his wife. Perhaps she always knew that but was afraid to face the truth.

Megan Holley's screenplay is quirky but not so quirky that it becomes self-conscious or exudes the sense of artificiality that some such movies do. There's honesty in the way the characters are forced to confront uncomfortable and sometimes unwanted emotions. The movie has some difficulty navigating the spiral from offbeat comedy to introspective drama, but the narrative manages to get where it needs to go. The ending is untidy despite a ten-minute epilogue. Most of the loose ends pertain to Norah; Rose is provided with closure.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to see Sunshine Cleaning is the pairing of two of the best and most charismatic young actresses today. The movie is in part about sisterhood, and they play beautifully off one another. One could easily envision the movie being less interesting and the characters less compelling in the hands of lesser talents. So much of what makes Rose and Norah intriguing results from what we read in the eyes and the expressions of the performers. Alan Arkin, meanwhile, is building upon the role that earned him an Oscar in Little Miss Sunshine . This is pretty much the same character, making one wonder whether Arkin has now reached the typecasting phase of his career.

Sunshine Cleaning premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and it has taken Overture Films more than a year to get this into theaters, which is indicative of how difficult a sell it may be. Certainly, there aren't many comedy/tragedies out there with gore quotients high enough to rival those of horror films. But, while the blood may be off-putting to some, Rose and Norah's company for 90 minutes warrants the concession.

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Sunshine Cleaning

There are so many superficial similarities between Sunshine Cleaning and that fellow Sundance success, Little Miss Sunshine , that the new movie was probably doomed from the start. It's all too easy for snide critics to point out the cute kid, charming old grandpa played by Alan Arkin, desert setting and quirky family drama, and deduce that Sunshine Cleaning is just another mishmash of indie tropes trying to cash in on the success of that movie with the big yellow van.

While it's true that Sunshine Cleaning indulges in a little too much quirk, and is not as good as Little Miss Sunshine , the new movie starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt has a lot to recommend it, starting with the honest performances from its two leads. As two very different sisters scrabbling out a living in dusty Albuquerque, Blunt and Adams build a believable rapport between them, and each digs deep in their characters to give the audience a view into their difficult, lonely lives.

Adams is Rose, a single mom raising an oddball son (Jason Spevack) by working for a cleaning service, and keeping her social life on hold while she engages in an affair with her married high school boyfriend ( Steve Zahn ). He's the one who gives her the idea to go into crime scene cleanup, and motivated by the chance to re-imagine herself as an entrepreneur, she talks her slacker sister Norah (Blunt) into joining the business.

Norah and Rose are incredibly inept at first, and the movie indulges a little in some blood-and-guts sight gags before taking the sisters in some unexpected directions thanks to the new job. Rose turns out to be really good at the business, and imbued with some of the can-do spirit from her entrepreneurial dad (Alan Arkin), she uses the business as means to get the rest of her life in order. She ditches the ex, works up the guts to attend a baby shower held by a ritzy former classmate, and starts a very tentative, warm flirtation with the guy who sells their heavy-duty cleaning supplies (Clifton Collins Jr.). Norah, on the other hand, is much more emotionally affected by the crime scenes they clean, and finds herself in a semi-romantic friendship with the daughter (Mary Lynn Rajskub) of a suicide victim.

Megan Holley's screenplay slips into stilted language and awkward coincidence sometimes, especially in the subplot that finds Rose and Norah recovering from their mother's suicide when they were children. Where other parts of the movie capture so much realism, from dingy parties to the tyranny of school principals, it's a ridiculous notion that two sisters struggling to get over a death that happened 25 years earlier would go into crime scene cleanup. As a result some of the key moments of the film, in which Rose and Norah are supposed to have found inner peace and new realizations about themselves, ring hollow and cliched.

But director Christine Jeffs is great with her actors, and takes a light, witty approach to the material that largely steers the movie away from the maudlin. Every time one of the characters does something unbelievable, like talking to her dead mom through a CB radio, Jeffs inserts a clever camera angle or well-timed edit to pull the mood back from the brink. Sunshine Cleaning avoids a tidy ending, and despite being cute redheads, Rose and Norah emerge as genuinely complicated, not always likable characters. Beyond the over-reliance on easy quirks, there's an intent toward real storytelling at the heart of Sunshine Cleaning that sets it above typical indie schmaltz.

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'Skincare' applies generous amount of dark humor to story of business rivals

Elizabeth banks brings empathy to a beauty expert going to extremes to save her spa..

Famed aesthetician Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) is challenged by a new boutique across the street from her own in “Skincare.”

The twisted and darkly unnerving comedic thriller “Skincare” is basically “I, Tonya,” only with boutique spas instead of ice skating. Both movies are inspired by true stories (though “I, Tonya” is more directly connected to real-life events) and both movies feature a desperately ambitious blonde who becomes obsessed with a more polished and media-attractive rival and enlists the help of some shady, sad-sack associates as she gets entangled in dubious and even criminal endeavors.

And in both movies, nobody realizes how ridiculous and crazy their actions would appear to any rational onlooker. They’re too busy caught up in the web of ridiculous madness to take a step back and say, “This needs to stop, now.”

With music video director Austin Peters making his feature film debut and demonstrating a stylish gift for “sunshine noir,” as the genre is sometimes called, “Skincare” is set in the year 2013, which is like a millennium in Social Media Years. Elizabeth Banks takes big swings and connects far more often than she misses in her portrayal of one Hope Goldman, and how’s that for a name that pretty much defines her goals?

After 20 years of niche girlbossing as a West Hollywood aesthetician to the famous and wannabe-famous, Hope is banking everything on a launch of her own line of products; she’s even landed a spot on a popular morning TV chat show hosted by Brett Wright (Nathan Fillion) and Kylie Curson (Julie Chang). It’s right about that time that an innovative and ambitious newcomer named Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a competing storefront spa just across the way, and from that moment forward, everything goes off the rails.

With Hopes clients defecting to Angel, Hope becomes the target an apparent stalker. Her tires are slashed and her email is hacked, making it appear as if she is sending confessional, sexually explicit emails to her entire client and contact base.

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With cinematographer Christopher Ripley providing sterling visuals that capture the fringes of Hollywood showbiz and director Peters moving things along a brisk pace (running time is 94 minutes), “Skincare” becomes a portrait of a woman unraveling, and while Hope isn’t the most likable of characters, Banks infuses her with a kind of sad vulnerability that draws our empathy as Hope resorts to extreme measures to identify her tormentor, restore her reputation and save her business. But she has an unfortunate habit of depending on men of questionable character and motivations for help, whether it’s Fillion’s oily TV anchor, the neighborhood auto shop guy (Erik Palladino) who has ulterior motives, or a self-appointed young “life coach” (Lewis Pullman). The most reliable and trustworthy person in Hope’s life is probably her assistant/PR manager Marine (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez), but Hope is too frantic and self-involved to see that.

“Skincare” sometimes veers into broad satire, but it gets the details right. Director Peters doesn’t condescend to the characters, and he even manages to deliver a scene that proves there’s still a little life in the Karaoke Trope, and that’s no small feat. “Skincare” is like a quick trip to the local spa. It’s not going to change your life, but it provides instant gratification and helps you escape for an hour and a half.

Boats and kayaks on the Chicago River. An “open swim” in the river is in the works for this fall.

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COMMENTS

Sunshine Cleaning movie review (2009)
"Sunshine Cleaning" is a little too sunny for its material. Its heroine, Rose, is a single mom in desperate need of income, trapped in a one-way affair with her high-school beau, who fathered her son but married someone else. Her son is always in trouble at school. Her sister, Norah, is a hard-living goofball. Then Rose starts a new business cleaning up messy crime scenes.
Sunshine Cleaning
Rated: 2.5/4 Dec 1, 2023 Full Review Danielle Solzman Solzy at the Movies Sunshine Cleaning succeeds because Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, and Alan Arkin are so good at their jobs. ...
Sunshine Cleaning (2008)
Sunshine Cleaning: Directed by Christine Jeffs. With Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school, a mom starts an unusual business -- a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service -- with her unreliable sister.
Sunshine Cleaning
Relying on a contrast between the bright leads working in grim situations, the story never quite comes together. Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 1, 2023. Danielle Solzman Solzy at the ...
Movie Review
Running Time: 102 minutes. Rated: R for some disturbing content. Reach For It: Alan Arkin reprises a familiar role as the girls' curmudgeonly but good-natured father, a man with a penchant for get ...
Sunshine Cleaning Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 3 ): Kids say ( 7 ): Quirky and affecting, SUNSHINE CLEANING is a lovely dramedy bolstered by extraordinary performances. As she's done with previous roles as a nun and a real-life Disney princess, Adams brings loads of warmth and empathy to her role. And in Blunt -- who has the rare gift of being able to marry humor ...
Sunshine Cleaning
Desperate to go to a baby shower hosted by an old classmate, Rose leaves the 7-year-old boy with a relative stranger at a cleaning supply store. Norah coaxes her nephew to celebrate his out-of-wedlock birth and buys him a fake tattoo that reads, "Lil B-tard.".
Sunshine Cleaning
Sunshine Cleaning garnered positive reviews from critics and was a minor box-office hit, grossing $17.3 million against a $5 million budget. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 25, 2009. ... Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, stating "This funny and touching movie depends on two can-do actresses to ...
Sunshine Cleaning Review
26 Jun 2009. Running Time: 91 minutes. Certificate: 15. Original Title: Sunshine Cleaning. From the producers of Little Miss Sunshine, another family story of people whose expectations of life ...
Review: 'Sunshine Cleaning' agreeably tidy
Tom Charity: Up-and-coming stars, optimistic message buoy "Sunshine Cleaning" Two struggling sisters become a crime-scene cleanup crew; Movie presents feelings in neat-and-tidy packages, reviewer says
Movie Review: Sunshine Cleaning
Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) is a single mother who is under way too much stress.Her job as a maid for a cleaning company leaves her in a constant state of self-loathing. Her son, Oscar (Jason ...
Sunshine Cleaning
Sunshine Cleaning. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are two highly attractive, naturally funny actresses on the cusp of stardom so their pairing in "Sunshine Cleaning" as two lost souls is genius.
Movie Review: Sunshine Cleaning (2009)
Advertised by Overture Films as a quirky comedy in the vein of the similarly themed and titled Oscar-winner Little Miss Sunshine that also shares some of the same cast and crew including Best Supporting Actor winner Alan Arkin in a fairly similar role to the 2006 movie-- Sunshine Cleaning has surprisingly become the most profitable film released so far in 2009.
Sunshine Cleaning (2008) Movie Review
Sunshine Cleaning is a great addition to that unidentified genre of grown-up comedies populated by other great entries like Your Sister's Sister and Enough Said. It is however, less of a comedy than it is a heart-warming emotional tale. Powered by outstanding performances from Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, it ultimately evolves into a character ...
Sunshine Cleaning
Once the high school cheerleading captain who dated the quarterback, Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) now finds herself a thirty something single mother working as a maid. Her sister Norah, (Emily Blunt), is still living at home with their dad Joe (Alan Arkin), a salesman with a lifelong history of ill-fated get rich quick schemes. Desperate to get her son into a better school, Rose persuades Norah ...
Sunshine Cleaning
Read an in-depth review and critical analysis of Sunshine Cleaning by film critic Brian Eggert on Deep Focus Review. Sunshine Cleaning should be a surefire pseudo-indie hit. At least, that's what the producers assumed when they wrangled the A-list cast together for.
Sunshine Cleaning
Sunshine Cleaning. By Peter Travers. March 11, 2009. Don't be scammed by the "sunshine" in the title. More than a few dark clouds roll through this tale of two sisters, played with comic ...
Bonding Amid Blood Splatters: Two Sisters and Their Messy Lives
A better title for the movie I am supposed to review for the record, it's "Sunshine Cleaning," directed by Christine Jeffs from a script by Megan Holley would be "Sundance Recycling ...
SUNSHINE CLEANING
SUNSHINE CLEANING is a funny, insightful character study of two sympathetic losers. The movie ends on a light, redemptive note that includes some positive, overt Christian references. Before that, the movie contains plenty of strong foul language, sexual references, some lying, and other mature subject matter.
Sunshine Cleaning
Sunshine Cleaning starts out as a comedy before gradually re-forming into something darker and even a little tragic. The laughs don't disappear altogether, but they become less overt and frequent, and a layer of quiet despair bubbles to the surface. The main characters are two twenty-something sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt).
Sunshine Cleaning
While it's true that Sunshine Cleaning indulges in a little too much quirk, and is not as good as Little Miss Sunshine, the new movie starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt has a lot to recommend it, star
Sunshine Cleaning Movie Reviews
Ryan's World the Movie: Hero Bundle Get two tickets, a mystery toy, and more! ... Sunshine Cleaning Critic Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. Learn more. Review Submitted. GOT IT ...
Sunshine Cleaning
part of the review. Sunshine Cleaning is at best an indifferent screenplay executed lazily and sloppily, but the film is still at least kind of watchable. For a start, it has some unusually pleasing cinematography, courtesy of John Toon. I say "cinematography" although it's plainly digital intermediate, but the film has a slightly washed ...
'Skincare' review: Movie applies generous amount of dark humor to story
Elizabeth Banks brings empathy to a beauty expert going to extremes to save her spa.

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Little Miss Sunshine

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