Sunshine Cleaning… a review
It’s fantastic when you get to the point in your career that you can be choosy about what jobs you accept.
Take Alan Arkin for example.
Mr. Arkin has now informed his agent that he will not star in any more movies unless they include the word “Sunshine” in the title.
Now THAT my friends is power.
First there was “Little Miss Sunshine” and now we have “Sunshine Cleaning”… what’s next Al, “Little Miss Sunshine Cleaning”?
Both movies are about a dysfunctional family that travels around in a battered van, and the only difference I can see is that in one movie they’re hauling a dead guy around on their way to a beauty pageant, and in the other they’re cleaning up after the dead guy has left a puddle on the hardwood floor.
I think that “Little Miss Sunshine Cleaning”, should combine the two stories so that it’s about an oddball grandfather who teaches stripper moves to a group of elite killers that clean up after their own murders.
Heyyyyy… I kinda like that.
Both stories are about a family of losers, with socially retarded offspring that are beset by tragedy while living in a torn down ghetto in a non descript part of white middle America.
Swap out the dad who can’t get anyone to buy his self empowerment courses and insert a mother who is embarrassed because she’s gone from being the home coming queen to minimum wage maid cleaning her former classmate’s houses (AND screwing another woman’s husband).
Change the chubby beauty queen wannabe, into a nerdy boy who gets kicked out of public school for licking his teacher’s leg.
The Grandfather is the same. He’s either shooting heroin or buying shrimp from the back of a truck, but really he’s there to tell the loser grandkids about how special they are even if no one else can see it.
Everyone else in the cast is just hanging around to appeal to the Marxist/Mute/Lesbian/Amputee contingent that is all too often ignored by the Hollywood machine (bastards).
The story breaks down like this:
The loser kid needs something (winning a beauty contest, or getting an education) that can’t be done by staying in the same place and doing the same thing.
We COULD call it the catalyst for the rest of the story, but I’m going to call it “clouds obscuring the Sunshine” merely because I’m getting paid a dollar every time I write “Sunshine” in this review.
Now, instead of the humorous road trip in which Grandad croaks, we find the protagonists starting their own company that specializes in cleaning bloodstains out of bathrooms and upolstery when a person has fallen head first into a running snowblower.
The key thing to remember here is that death is funny.
You can either pack grandad in ice or you can slip and fall in a puddle of brain matter.
There is one thing HUGE difference though, and that’s the lack of a side splitting dance number at the end of the film.
What?!! How can you have a low key nerd comedy without awkward choreography?
Holy “Save Pedro” Batman!! You mean there isn’t a classic Jon Heder moment to wrap things up?
There’s no chubby bee girl tap dancing in front of bikers to a “Blind Mellon” song?
Well, I don’t know how I feel about this ending then.
This isn’t very Sunshiny at all then is it? (hey, that still counts for a dollar).
I dunno… it’s kind of quirky but we’ve really seen this film before.
Alan Arkin has already won the academy award for best supportuing crusty grandfather of a dysfunctional family film, but hey, everyone loves a sequel don’t we?
Al… Forget the naysayers.
I’m looking forward to you next Sunshine movie.
This film rates three Sunshines out of a possible five Shunshines.
(ok, time to cash my cheque).
Sunshine!!!
