Bring Sunshine Cleaning up at Sundance and you're likely to hear the same thing, over and over, "It's no Little Miss Sunshine." I agree -- and thank God for that. While I found the overrated Little Miss Sunshine to be crushingly schematic and one-note, Sunshine Cleaning is human, messy, and lovely. Better yet, it hails the arrival of two major female talents (director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley) and confirms two others: surging star Amy Adams (Enchanted) and scene stealer Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada).
The two play sisters down on their luck in sun-baked Albuquerque, New Mexico; Rose (Adams) is a former cheerleading star who's fallen into a dead-end affair with local cop Mac (Steve Zahn), while Norah (Blunt) is a rebel who blows off her boyfriend for a tentative relationship with a local blood bank worker (Mary Lynn Rajskub -- their meet-cute is depicted above). Each sister is seriously poor -- their father (Alan Arkin), who's obsessed with get-rich-quick schemes, is of no help -- so plucky Rose decides to take Mac up on his advice and go into the lucrative business of cleaning up after crime scenes. It's not the kind of work that's going to impress Rose's snobby former friends, but she and Norah are good at it, and it allows both sisters to finally get out from under the thumb of their thwarted expectations.
Adams is a pure pleasure, deepening the perky persona she's perfected in both Enchanted and Junebug; Rose may be doggedly optimistic, but the cracks in her facade reveal something desperate and in dire need of love. Blunt has the supporting role, but that's a niche this actress has claimed as her own, as it allows her to give consistently intriguing performances that are unsympathetic but fascinating. Only Arkin struggles a bit, never totally divesting himself of the similar blowhard he played in Little Miss Sunshine. That character and the sunny title will make comparisons unavoidable when Sunshine Cleaning is eventually bought and released, but for a film about sidestepping expectations, there's no better challenge it's suited for.
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