Death is messy, both emotionally and physically. Yet, while most everyone has experienced the former side effect, if you will, of someone's passing, you never would have known much about the latter in the past if you didn't work in some related field or otherwise experienced it firsthand.
After all, movies and especially TV shows of old never showed the real results, as people either passed away gently (eyes closing) or simply fell down when killed in war or other action. Heck, even horror movies -- where blood and guts have firmly taken up residence over the years -- were relatively chaste in terms of such sights.
Nowadays, just about everything is shown, not just in gory scare fests, but also cop dramas, both on the big screen and small. Even so, the thing that's rarely addressed is who clean up the mess after the body's gone. And I'm not referring to the soundstage (where it would have been delicious, in a sense, back when filmmakers used chocolate syrup as a substitute for black and white blood), but rather homes and crime scenes after the cops have left and the forensics folks have collected their last bit of evidence.
In "Sunshine Cleaning," that falls into the gloved, but amateur hands of Amy Adams, not in fairy princess or nun mode, but instead in the form of the protagonist of this gritty yet somewhat light and decently engaging dramedy about such a business and a few of those who make a living doing that.
Adams plays Rose Lorkowski, a single mom to 7-year-old Oscar (Jason Spevack), but also a mother figure of sorts to her young adult sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), for reasons later explained in the film. Both are down on their luck -- Norah still lives at home with their long-widowed father (Alan Arkin in what's becoming his signature role, the loving but somewhat eccentric grandfather character) while Rose has to take Oscar out of school due to his apparent ADD -- but things look up when Rose's married cop lover (Steve Zahn) informs the maid that good money can be made cleaning up crime scenes.
And thus the story unfolds -- as told by director Christine Jeffs who works from a script by Megan Holley -- including dark comedy bits about starting up such a biz, as well as more conventional drama regarding the emotional cleanup (or lack thereof) that's also needed following death. Most of the characters -- save for the cleaning supplies store one played by Clifton Collins Jr. who's lost an arm sometime in the past, but is the most well-adjusted of the bunch -- are still reeling in one way or another from a past death of someone close to them (while the death of dreams and popularity is also thrown in for good thematic measure).
To some (or many, for that matter), that might sound depressing to one degree or another. Thus, it's a testament to the work of the cast and crew that they keep the proceedings from becoming too grim and, in fact, deliver a fairly entertaining and occasionally touching pic.
The performances are good across the board, but Adams and Blunt really nail theirs, created flawed and damaged but likable personas that engage us from start to finish. Jeffs more than ably handles the material from a directorial standpoint, and delivers an effort that we thankfully haven't seen before and/or can instantly predict where it's headed.
Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but for those who don't mind some emotional and visceral mess that needs tending to, "Sunshine Cleaning" might be just what the janitor and maid ordered. It rates as a 6.5 out of 10.
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