MOVIE - Sunshine Cleaning

Loved it - a lot
Viewed: Monday, April 27 at El Con
Rotten Tomato: 71% Mine: 95%
EW: B- Mine: A (Its beginning to appear that I disagree with EW a lot)
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Released: 3-13-09
R (1:42)
Directed by Christine Jeffs (she also directed Little Miss Sunshine)
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn, Alan Arkin

Rose Norkowski (Amy Adams) has an eight-year old son, low self-esteem, a bumbling screw-up sister (Emily Blunt), a dad who tries all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes (Alan Arkin), and a mom who committed suicide when she and Nora were young. Add to that an affair with her now-married high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn) and a cleaning job that brings in very little income, plop it all in the middle of Albuquerque, NM, and you have the basis for this movie. There were so many layers to peel through, and I loved every one of them. The relationship between the two sisters was really the crux of the whole movie, and Adams and Blunt did mighty magnificent jobs. Such acting!

Zahn's character is a cop, and while investigating a suicide he hears how much the cleaning company charges for bloody, smelly, yucky clean-ups. He convinces Rose to try her hand at this sort of clean up and removal. The gross jobs they get are part funny, part very serious, and Rose and Nora get better and better at it until Nora screws up once again and burns down one of their jobs. Without insurance, they are sunk.

Clever, happy ending. Cute kid. A new love interest -a really interesting one. Layers and layers. Totally enjoyable, real characters with a great storyline. A new favorite.

Hey, this is my 250th post since I started blogging in August. Pretty cool.