Sunshine Cleaning

When I heard that the creators of Little Miss Sunshine had made a new movie, I was really excited.  Sunshine Cleaning took forever to make it to our market, but it finally did.  Rose and Nora Lorkowski are sisters who’ve had a tough life.  Their mother committed suicide when they were young and their father did the best he could to raise them.  Rose is a single mother and she’s having an affair with a married policeman.  When Rose’s son, Oscar, has trouble fitting in at school, she decides he should go to private school, but can’t figure out how to come up with the money.  Her boyfriend tells her she should start a crime-scene clean-up business and she recruits her sister to help her.

I was expecting this to be a hilarious movie, and while it did have funny moments, I don’t think I’d bill it as a comedy.  I thought the acting was solid, but I just didn’t find the story compelling.  After it was over, I told my friend that I really didn’t know if I liked it or not and she said she felt the same way.  Later that evening, I got an email from her that said, “I’ve been thinking about that movie all afternoon.  That family certainly had its problems.  I’m not sure what the message of the movie was, but it has stuck with me.  I guess they were helping clients deal with what they had dealt with when their mother committed suicide.  I’m not sure what the sister driving off into the sunset had to do with the movie.” I would recommend waiting until you can rent this one to watch it.