As I was walking toward the movie theater this past Saturday, I passed by a poster for a movie starring Alexis Bledel. My reaction to the poster was an angry "Fuck! Now I have to see this fucking movie!", because while I know nothing about this movie, I can just tell that it's going to be a piece-of-shit that I'm going to have to see anyway because I'm fond of the actress in it. I call it the Anna Faris Quandary, named after another actress I like and who has caused me to blithely toss away so much money just to see her in another bad movie.
I've already admitted to my schoolboy crush on Amy Adams, although unlike the other actresses I'm into, my thoughts about her are far less carnal and far more innocent. Like milkshake-and-two-straws innocent. Another difference between her and the others is that I've liked all the movies she's appeared in, and I've never had that reaction of "Fuck! Now I have to see this fucking movie!" with her. Well, I did see her in the poster for Night at the Museum 2, but I'm going to have to pretend that never happened until the day that terrible movie comes out and I'll have no choice but to purchase a ticket.
You know who I also like? Emily Blunt. I first saw her in a movie back in the summer of 2005 called My Summer of Love. That's a pretty apt title in more ways than one, because summer '05 was also when my crush on Amy Adams was reignited after watching her in Junebug. You have Adams, who is all cuteness and sincerity, and then you have Blunt, who radiated a kind of dangerous sex appeal. Sweet and salty, good and bad, Mary Ann and Ginger. Incidentally, the summer of '05 was also when I began my celibacy (my way of telling the opposite sex "You can't fire me, I quit!"). So I'm ALL fucked up.
A couple of years later, both Blunt and Adams appeared in Charlie Wilson's War and all I remember about that movie is how smoking hot Blunt looked in her underwear. That scene would've been even hotter if it wasn't for Tom Hanks' drunk ass stepping into the scene. It was a cool movie, but what really sucked was that Blunt and Adams didn't appear together in it. Someone must've been listening to me bitching about it to myself, because shortly afterwards some incredibly nice lady decided to make a movie where both actresses star as siblings. The movie is called Sunshine Cleaning and that's what I saw last Saturday.
In the opening scene, a man in a suit sprays Binaca into his mouth and puts a shotgun shell into his pocket. He then enters a sporting goods store and heads for the gun section. He asks the guy behind the counter for a particular kind of 12 gauge rifle. When the counter guy hands it to him, the man in a suit takes the shell out of his pocket, loads it into the shotgun and puts the barrel up against his chin. At this point the entire audience I was with gasped, and it's a good thing everything cuts to black when he pulls the trigger, because otherwise I think half of the audience would've gone running for the exits and head back home where they could watch Enchanted in the comfort of knowing nobody blows their fucking head off in it.
The credits sequence follows, and that's where we're introduced to Amy Adams' single mother character, Rose. She's a maid for a cleaning service, and in her first scene, she's cleaning up a client's kitchen while watching a bunch of high school kids have a fun time drinking and swimming by the pool. You can totally tell that she's watching it in a kind of "man, I miss my youth" sort of way. Holy shit, do I know the fuckin' feeling. Even if it wasn't Amy Adams playing this role, I would already have given my complete empathy to the character based on this moment alone. Then we're introduced to Emily Blunt's character, Norah, fast asleep while her father tries to wake her lazy ass up to go to work. Norah and Rose's father is played by Alan Arkin, so you already know he's going to be great in this. I'm trying to think of a movie he was bad in. Hmm. Nope, always good. Even in that Jerky Boys movie, he ruled.
Steve Zahn is in this too, he plays a police detective who cheats on his wife by meeting up with Rose for quickies at a roadside motel. He also happens to be the detective sent to the sporting goods store after that guy in a suit killed himself. While taking statements from the witnesses, he overhears a crime-scene cleanup crew talking about how much money they're going to make for wiping all the brain and blood off the floors and ceiling. He tells Rose about this, figuring since she already has experience cleaning places up, maybe she could go into business for herself in this particular niche industry. She dismisses it at first, but changes her mind later after deciding that all the money she could make can go to sending her son to private school. So with Norah as her partner, they go to work cleaning up blood and various other bodily fluids from crime scenes.
Adams and Blunt are really good here together, they have a chemistry and I completely believed them as sisters. I've since looked it up, and I guess part of their success in this flick comes from the fact that they really do like each other in real life. The story goes that when they were casting the movie Doubt, they wanted Natalie Portman for the role of Sister James, and either Portman turned it down or wasn't available. Blunt heard about this and rather than try to get the role herself, she told Adams about it. When you factor in the fact that actors can be highly competitive in addition to the hard truth that women secretly hate each other, this comes off as a genuine Hollywood miracle. Or maybe Blunt was trying to set Adams up for major embarrassment and the shit backfired. You never know.
The supporting cast features other actors I like, like this one dude named Clifton Collins Jr.. I remember seeing this dude in movies as far back as Fortress and 187. Hell, the motherfucker was Tack from The Stoned Age! If you don't know about Tack, then you just don't fuckin' know, bro. He's also going to be in the sequel to The Boondock Saints, which believe it or not is finally going to happen, ten years after the first one. Troy Duffy's been talking it up for years, and the next thing I know, that shit's already in post-production. Right on. Now all I need is a sequel to Free Enterprise and I will feel slightly less exiled from contentment. Also in this flick is Mary Lynn Rajskub, or as most people probably know her as, Chloe from 24. I remember when she used to perform on Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. She was also Cross' girlfriend at the time, and after they broke up, she was not only out of his life but out of the fuckin' show too. Goddamn, I never knew Tobias Fünke could be a cold motherfucker like that.
The crime scenes in the movie aren't too gross or disgusting, in case that kinda shit bothers you. They don't show much, aside from the occasional bloody wall or stained mattress. Oh, and maggots too. It could've definitely been worse, but the filmmakers held back from it. It's not like this is a clinical study about crime scenes, anyway. You want that shit, just click on any cable channel for Forensic Files or New Detectives or whatever the fuck else features the remains of some 9-year old boy prostitute who was strangled in Indiana and the killer was found by following a trail of M&M's and semen or whatever the fuck it is. I don't know how you guys (or my mother, for that matter) can watch hours of that shit, but god bless you if that's what you dig. You're stronger than me, that's for sure. I prefer my horrible crime scenes in works of fiction. I don't care if crime scene cleanup people don't act like Adams and Blunt do in the movie. I remember watching an episode of Insomniac with Dave Attell, and Attell followed along a dude who actually did that shit for a living, and this motherfucker was Creepy with a capital C. Fuck that shit.
Supposedly this movie came out at Sundance over a year ago and no one picked it up for a long time, which usually means that the movie's a tough sell, either because it's too weird or it just plain sucks. Neither is the case with Sunshine Cleaning. It's an above-average movie, no great shakes, but still well worth a watch. It has such a low-key approach that when it finally ended I wasn't expecting it at all. It kinda reminded me of the ending to Traffic, a kind of "life goes on" deal that could infuriate some people but I was cool with. It doesn't leave you hanging, it just tells you that we're done watching this particular section of the characters' lives. That's too bad, because I wouldn't mind seeing another movie following all of these characters.
I dug this flick, it's got an overall sweetness and charm that makes it hard to dislike. Unless you're some incredibly jaded and cynical motherfucker, then in that case you'll just make gagging noises the whole time, because you're just too cool for the room. Take that shit somewhere else, if that's your deal. As for me, this seems like one of those movies that if I ever run into while watching cable, I'll end up watching the rest of it. It just has that comfortable feeling to it. There's genuine heart to this movie, and that goes a long way for me. That's the best way I can explain it, sorry. I'm not a smart man and I'm not articulate. I'm a stupid no-good dummy moron who once saw a cartoon where a rooster sipped some water from a pond to gargle with it and believed that roosters really did that shit. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. Because I'm stupid.
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