Sunshine Cleaning

This would be the perfect indie comedy if it didn’t suddenly get all sentimental in the end. Even worse, the final five minutes are just a wish-fulfillment sequence which rivals the lamest of the 1980s happy-ending filmmaking. But up until then, this is a pretty effective story about a deeply flawed woman (Amy Adams, who, frankly, will never be a great actress but will always be adored by critics because she has the kind of jolie laide looks that caused them to bestow endless honors on Meryl Streep), her even more messed-up sister (Emily Blunt), their scheming father (Alan Arkin, who now has a niche) and etc. There are some affairs, some high-school-girls-getting-their-revenge-on-the-ex-cheerleader, some semi-naked stuff featuring Adams and Steve Zahn (can’t she do better?) and a story about being second-rate in Albuquerque and starting up a business to clean up the mess left by dead bodies and the love and tenderness that such things produce. Also, there is a really nice turn by Mary Lynn Rajskub as a lesbian phlebotomist, which is nice, because, outside of the Die Hard series, very few movies feature heroic lesbian phlebotomists.