Sunshine Cleaning

I picked up this movie on Sunday night because I was feeling pressured at the RedBox. Do you ever use RedBox? It's a nerve-wracking experience, let me tell you. Basically, it's a vending machine for movies, but in order to choose a movie you have to scroll through a dozen screens with tiny jpegs of video box graphics and try to make a decision on how to spend the next two hours of your life while an entire line-up of people behind you tap their feet and clear their throats in impatience! Yikes. Okay, it's not that bad, but I do feel pressured when someone is waiting in line behind me. And that's how I happened across Sunshine Cleaning. It was a quick pick because I couldn't stand to make the gentleman behind me wait another second.

"From the makers of Little Miss Sunshine" is the tag that caught my eye, and though I didn't have very high expectations for this Sundance crowd pleaser, I ended up loving it. It's touching and sweet, filled with moments of humor and enough tear-jerking power to make me reach for the Kleenex box more than once. I loved Rose and Norah (actually, all the characters), and how they willingly entered into the pain of strangers, using their own past sorrows to bring hope and comfort in heartbreaking situations. A beautiful, beautiful movie.

Have you seen it? If not, I hope you check it out! And if you do, let me know what you think.

A synopsis:
Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) finds herself a single mother attempting to support her son Oscar (Jason Spevack) and her unreliable sister Norah (Emily Blunt) while working a mundane job as a maid. Once the head cheerleader in school with plenty of prospects, Rose now has little to show for her years, and while she still sees the former lead football player (Steve Zahn), it is little more than a despondent affair. When Oscar is expelled from public school, Rose takes a job as a bio-hazard crime-scene cleaner to help pay for a private education, and brings Norah on to help in her steadily growing business. As the sisters work to clean up the messes left behind by the chaotic lives of others, they must learn to reconcile their own differences and overcome a troubled past if they hope to prosper in their newfound venture.