Review of Sunshine Cleaning (2008) by Louis E — 25 Jan 2010

I liked this movie. It's a small indie movie that showed up at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and did not do much at the box office (made only 12 million but not sure on the production budget).

However, what I like is the pemise of this movie: Rose Lorkowski (played by Amy adams), a once popular cheerleader in high school finds herself as a now 30 something single mom barely holding on to a job as a maid cleaning up hotel rooms.

She still sees (and occasionally sleeps with) her high school flame, presumabely still trying to live in the past even though he is now married and has a couple kids. Rose is made clear to us is struggling to keep things together in Life and she finally catches a break when her and her sister Norah (played by Emily Blunt) decide to take advantage of their cleaning skills and start a business of their own.

They clean up crime scenes where people have died, usually in a violent and messy way. Through meeting people who have to have these violent episodes cleaned up, Rose and Noah meet people who experience real loss and helps give themselves some perspective on things.

In general, little is resolved in their own lives really, and it's sort of a slice of life movie, but Amy adams was the draw for me. She does a good job here portaying the woman struggling in life where every one else seems to just be getting on well and seems to have no problems.

This was a perfect character for Amy to play and I liked watching her. Not much to say about direction or production design, it was a small budget movie and it looked that way, but you never feel it's obvious.

The only thing that bothered me about this movie was Alan Arkin playing the dad in which he essentially plays the same character he played and won an Oscar - which was a crime scene in and of itself - for in Little Miss Sunshine.

In his view, Arkin made one movie called "Little Miss Sunshine Cleaning" where he plays the quirky, big hearted, cynical grandfather. However, that was the only part of the movie that did not work for me, but a good small budget movie for me in general.