Day 17: Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

I have this bad habit of going into a movie store, noticing a film, or films, that I want to watch, I get them, but then they sit on my shelf for months or years going unwatched. The get hidden behind even more such movies I've picked up, or, as the case often is, when I'm in the mood to watch a film, these just don't cut it. This is one of those films. The trailer looked promising - a quirky indie film with heart; and so it sat on my shelf for over a year. This project will hopefully help me clear the cobwebs off some of these movies, and finally get around to watching them. Today was the first time I picked one of these cast-away movies up to watch.

Following a 2001 NPR All Things Considered report about two women in Seattle who started their own bio-hazard removal service, the filmmakers got the idea to make a fictional film around that premise. So our film features Rose, and her sister Norah, starting Sunshine Cleaning, a bio-hazard crime scene cleaning company. If this was not a pleasant enough life for Rose, she is also a single mother of a 7-year old who is constantly in trouble at school (though, he's just a hyper child being a child), and is having a one-way affair with her high school sweetheart who knocked her up but married someone else. If this movie doesn't scream happiness, I don't know what does.

There is a great premise here for a dark comedy, and even great actresses with Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, but sadly the film does not capitalize on either. The plot takes forever to get going and then once it does, it doesn't go very far. The movie gets lost in its various subplots, never finding solid ground to stand on. Adams and Blunt give wonderfully charming performances, but they are not enough to save the film. It's a shame to see a novel idea and good actors wasted by seemingly lack of structure in the script. The most memorable part of the film is the character of Winston, played by Clifton Collins Jr., who is an one-armed hardware store owner who helps Rose and Norah get the industry figured out. Sadly, he is tossed into the film to provide a possible love interest for Rose that never goes anywhere. The film could have been a lot better with a cleaning up of the script.