" Sunshine Cleaning "
'Life's a messy business.'
Directed by Christine Jeffs
Released: March 27th, 2009
Directed by Christine Jeffs
Released: March 27th, 2009
A friend recommended this movie to me several times and I never had the opportunity to really sit down and watch it, but tonight I felt inspired to see a new film and so I did. Heading into the film, the only knowledge I had of this movie was that it is a film produced by the creators of Little Miss Sunshine, which is one of my favorite movies, and that the movie garnered generally positive reviews.
In the very first scene of the movie, a man puts a shotgun cartridge into his coat pocket and enters a hunting store where he asks the man behind the counter for a specific type of shotgun. The man hands him the shotgun and turns around, only to have the customer put the cartridge into the shotgun and commit suicide right there in the hunting shop. After this scene, Mac (Steve Zahn) is introduced as a policeman who discovers that the crew called in to the crime scene to clean the hunting shop makes an astounding $3000. Mac then tells Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams), with whom he is having a secret affair, that she can make extreme amounts of money by cleaning up crime scenes. Feeling quite despondent about her day job as a house cleaner, Rose decides to become an entrepreneur and take on the crime scene cleanup business. Enlisting the help of her outlandish sister Norah (Emily Blunt), together they learn more than just how to clean up the remnants of the deceased.
The story is about dealing with loss, accepting and understanding it, and learning how we, as
human beings, can reach out and help those who have lost. In the film, it is clear that witnessing the suicide of their mother as children has created a helplessness among the sisters. Even their father, Joe (Alan Arkin), struggles to find meaning and purpose in his life as an elder. The concept of the story is brilliant, however I felt as if the movie did not entirely deliver.
I think that what saved this movie from being an ultimate failure was the acting performances. As usual, Alan Arkin used the short time he had on screen to shine. Perhaps it was not as stunning as his Academy Award winning performance in Little Miss Sunshine, but his portrayal of Joe Lorkowski in Sunshine Cleaning was superb in its own right. Jason Spevack, who played Rose's young son Oscar, also deserves a nod for a wonderful performance.
Overall, I think the movie could have been better...but like most movies, when you go in thinking about it too much, you tend to come out disappointed. From now on I think I may just watch movies without really learning any background information at all in order to see if I can grasp the concepts and themes being developed without having outside information. I would recommend this movie to people simply because it is undoubtedly a morbid, feel-good story that will make you question the idea of losing someone very special. In my own opinion, however, I think it wasn't as good as I expected it to be.
As a good friend of mine often says, "no expectations, no disappointments."
In the very first scene of the movie, a man puts a shotgun cartridge into his coat pocket and enters a hunting store where he asks the man behind the counter for a specific type of shotgun. The man hands him the shotgun and turns around, only to have the customer put the cartridge into the shotgun and commit suicide right there in the hunting shop. After this scene, Mac (Steve Zahn) is introduced as a policeman who discovers that the crew called in to the crime scene to clean the hunting shop makes an astounding $3000. Mac then tells Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams), with whom he is having a secret affair, that she can make extreme amounts of money by cleaning up crime scenes. Feeling quite despondent about her day job as a house cleaner, Rose decides to become an entrepreneur and take on the crime scene cleanup business. Enlisting the help of her outlandish sister Norah (Emily Blunt), together they learn more than just how to clean up the remnants of the deceased.
The story is about dealing with loss, accepting and understanding it, and learning how we, as
human beings, can reach out and help those who have lost. In the film, it is clear that witnessing the suicide of their mother as children has created a helplessness among the sisters. Even their father, Joe (Alan Arkin), struggles to find meaning and purpose in his life as an elder. The concept of the story is brilliant, however I felt as if the movie did not entirely deliver.I think that what saved this movie from being an ultimate failure was the acting performances. As usual, Alan Arkin used the short time he had on screen to shine. Perhaps it was not as stunning as his Academy Award winning performance in Little Miss Sunshine, but his portrayal of Joe Lorkowski in Sunshine Cleaning was superb in its own right. Jason Spevack, who played Rose's young son Oscar, also deserves a nod for a wonderful performance.
Overall, I think the movie could have been better...but like most movies, when you go in thinking about it too much, you tend to come out disappointed. From now on I think I may just watch movies without really learning any background information at all in order to see if I can grasp the concepts and themes being developed without having outside information. I would recommend this movie to people simply because it is undoubtedly a morbid, feel-good story that will make you question the idea of losing someone very special. In my own opinion, however, I think it wasn't as good as I expected it to be.
As a good friend of mine often says, "no expectations, no disappointments."
My rating: 6.5/10
Positives: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Jason Spevack, and Alan Arkin deliver excellent performances
Negatives: Plot develops, but mundanely; not as funny or comical as expected; hugely average film overall
Positives: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Jason Spevack, and Alan Arkin deliver excellent performances
Negatives: Plot develops, but mundanely; not as funny or comical as expected; hugely average film overall
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