There is one thing for certain regarding the producers of Sunshine Cleaning, coming on the heals of the critically acclaimed Little Miss Sunshine they are not here to merely blow sunshine up your butt. Life is hard, life is messy. You will find moments of levity, support from your family and friends that will keep you going, but life will never go as you plan. Anybody who tells you differently is probably selling something.
Of course the rub is they are selling you a film. Because Little Miss Sunshine was so successful, it was probably hard to resist following a similar formula. Alan Arkin once again plays an off-the-wall father/grandfather mentoring a misfit grandchild. If it wasn’t such an endearing combination, it would already be old. What doesn’t get old is the family strife and dysfunction that no matter how many times it is mined can always be approached from a different angle.
The approach Sunshine Cleaning takes is a heart-wrenching trip into some humorous instances of life’s macabre moments. With a premise that could have easily fallen into insensitivity, Amy Adams finds the perfect balance as a single mother cleaning up life’s worst moments. The humor is ever-present but subtle, allowing the story to develop without distraction, the gravity of the situations to be fully understood.
The weight of those situations found a lift in Sunshine Cleaning. They never disappear because the film stays clear of Hollywood cliché. Life is hard so the film doesn’t condescend by blowing sunshine up your butt. But it does give you a moment to pause and smile; a reminder that life can be good when you clean some of the muck of living.
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