Can I just say, I thought Emily Blunt was all right before, but now I think she’s absolutely ace? The leads in Sunshine Cleaning were amazing — Amy Adams is actually luminous, even when she plays a maid, Emily Blunt is so versatile as expressive as Norah, and oh my god Alan Arkin rocks so hard.
Watch this film! It’s good.
Rose (Adams) is a single mother who fights to make ends meet by working for a maid service, and she also happens to be having an affair with her high school boyfriend, Mac (Steve Zahn), who’s a local police detective. Norah (Blunt) is Rose’s emo sister, an all-round wastrel who loses her waitressing job because she partied too hard. Alan Arkin plays their dad.
Mac tells Rose that crime scene cleanup crews make a lot of money, and when her son gets into trouble in school again and needs to go private, she decides to go into the business.
I’m not sure if what I have to say next qualifies as any type of spoiler, but you’ve been warned.
Alan Arkin’s clip-on sunnies were movie gold, I tell you. The other amazing male actor was Clifton Collins Jr, who played Winston, owner of a janitorial supplies business who helps Rose out. Ooh, he was in Star Trek.
And Steve Zahn — I thought it might be stretching things a bit to make Mac the high school boyfriend, since he’s well out of his thirties. I’m don’t think they quite pulled it off, but he does look pretty youthful, just not that young. But that’s probably because I first saw him in Reality Bites and I know he’s in his forties.
I’m not sure if Sunshine Cleaning was a comedy or a drama, I guess it’s a dramedy. It had just the right amount of quirk to make it interesting, but not so ‘interesting’ it was incomprehensibly weird.
I liked that the family’s emotional scars were treated with a light touch. The ending was a bit corny but it did leave enough to the imagination.
Is it a coincidence that Alan Arkin’s been in two films I liked with the word ’sunshine’ in the title? He’s a freaking acting genius.