Off-Balance Comedy ‘Sunshine Cleaning Could Use Some Cleaning

It’s a part of life we generally don’t think about – mostly because it reminds us of our own mortality and the business’s gruesome nature. Yet every time a crime occurs, every time a person, famous or forgotten, takes their own life or that of another, someone has to come along and clean up the mess. No, the police don’t do it, and local law enforcement doesn’t typically provide post-investigation housekeeping under the “serve and protect” slogan. Someone must come along and dispose of the debris and make something civilized from a horrific event.

For the characters in the new indie comedy Sunshine Cleaning, working the post-mortem detail is a happy accident. Unfortunately, it’s about the only joy these individuals, or this film, manage to harbor.

Rose (Amy Adams) is a single mother raising a confused and complicated kid named Oscar (Jason Spevack). She was once the head cheerleader in high school. Now she’s a maid working for the classmates she used to hang out with. She also maintains a relationship with former Big Man On Campus, now married police officer Mac (Steve Zahn). He promises Rose he will divorce, but his ever-increasing family seems to suggest otherwise.

Desperate to raise the money to send her son to a fancy private school, Rose decides to start mopping up crime scenes. Mac helps her with a few connections, and local supply clerk Winston (Clifton Collins, Jr.) shows her the ropes. Rose then hires on her troubled sister Norah (Emily Blunt), and together they begin their death-based endeavor. As the jobs get messier and messier, the women are reminded of the pain they experienced when their mother committed suicide. Another tragic accident will have them questioning their commitment to the business – and each other.

Sunshine Cleaning is a slice of life carved so thinly it can barely stand up on its own. Without the amazing support of actors Adams and Blunt, this minor microcosm of New Mexican fringe dwelling would fall apart from outright narrative apathy. While many would have you believe Sunshine Cleaning is some amazing indie treasure, sitting rightfully alongside Little Miss Sunshine and Juno as grrrl power gems, this navel-gazing non-action only perks up when the obvious is avoided, and the truly unusual is explored.

Sunshine Cleaning has many intriguing elements: the burgeoning relationship between Rose and supply store clerk Winston, the tormented past of Rose and Nora’s mother, and little Oscar’s obvious emotional problems. Yet director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley keep meandering back to material we don’t care about. As a result, the film is a lost opportunity.

Even the premise gets underplayed. Crime scene clean-up has got to be very demanding, high-stress, and disturbing, no matter how desensitized you become to the carnage. The sights, the smells, and the significance of the after-violence would be the overriding theme of any story centering on it. Sunshine Cleaning does pay lip service to the meaning of going from maid to residential mortician, but it’s not enough. Rose talks about “being connected”, while Norah is more prosaic about removing the last vestiges of a human being from the Earth.

Of course, their coping methods are based on their trauma from their mother’s suicide, but the reality of their reactions remains mute. Only once, when Rose sits and comforts an elderly woman who just lost her husband, does the Sunshine Cleaning have the kind of emotional impact we crave. The rest of the time, this job exists in the story for its quirk value.

As do many of the side characters. Alan Arkin’s presence as Joe will remind many of his Oscar-winning work in Little Miss, though his flim-flam father figure here is poorly defined. So is former football player /boyfriend/ police officer Mac. There is an entire film to be made about the post-high school downfall of both Mac and Rose, something hinted at during our heroine’s ill-fated reunion with her ex-classmates at a baby shower. But just like the logistics of situations, Sunshine Cleaning also pulls back hard on the reins leaving us frustrated and chomping at the bit, if you will, for more. There’s also too much grandstanding obviousness, as when Norah goes “trestling” – which is nothing more than an excuse for getting drunk, climbing a train bridge, and crying as her past washes by in locomotive-fueled flashbacks.

Sunshine Cleaning is unsure of its symbolism, unaware of what to do with Winston’s one-armed model-making, or Oscar’s obsession with binoculars. ACB radio that acts as a conduit to the characters’ desire to communicate with the other side, but for the most part, Jeffs makes a joke of such searching. And then there is the last act reveal. In essence, without giving much away, a character creates a situation they could have stepped up and offered early on. It would have probably solved a great many problems for everyone involved and taken the burden of business acumen away from those unfamiliar with such real-world needs. Yet, the script waits until the last ten minutes to pull this plot point out, manipulating the audience into a false sense of affection while creating complicated narrative entanglements that never come unknotted.

Still, watching Adams and Blunt in their roles make this a brisk, breezy two hours. The chemistry they offer and the performances they deliver act as a buffer for Sunshine Cleaning’s many misgivings. Had the oddball been tossed aside in favor of more family strife, had the unnecessary subplots been shorn of their overall import, had things been simplified to suggest legitimate desperation instead of the manufactured movie kind, we’d appreciate the effort.

Sunshine Cleaning begs the question of who is its intended audience. Lovers of art-house fair will probably feel shorted. Mainstream moviegoers won’t appreciate the overeager eccentricity. The result is a wash.