Sunshine Cleaning is a dark, slightly off-bubble dramedy powered by a sweet, sincere, oddball charm that somehow manages to strike a balance between humor and tragedy in such a way that we often don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

Rose (the always sparkling Amy Adams) looks at herself in the mirror each morning and tells the reflection she sees there that she’s a winner. But by night’s end, the pep talk has worn off and Rose is curled in a fetal position sobbing, “I am a loser.” Rose used to be hot stuff. But now the former head cheerleader spends her days in a dead-end job cleaning the houses of wealthy, former high-school classmates and taking care of her misunderstood 8-year-old son Oscar (Jason Spevack). The single mom’s one escape is an increasingly unsatisfying affair with Mac (Steve Zhan), the former all-star quarterback from her glory days.

Desperate to make enough money to put Oscar in a school that can address his special needs, Rose converts her Albuquerque maid service into a biohazard crime scene cleaning business. She enlists the help of Norah (Emily Blunt), her pot-smoking, freeloading younger sister who never recovered from their mother’s suicide and now lives with their eccentric, curmudgeonly father (Alan Arkin “reprising” his role from Little Miss Sunshine). While Rose throws herself into the unsavory job with all the go-get-‘em energy she can muster, Norah finds it impossible to hide her squeamishness. Little do the sisters realize that their gruesome job will turn into a journey of mutual self-discovery and healing.

Sunshine Cleaning, like many of the better comedies these days, knows that humor is recognizable only when compared against drama. Like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine (whose producers are also behind this film), Sunshine Cleaning allows a darker shade throughout, unafraid to function also as a drama. While the film makes the most of the black comic sensibilities available when placing two beautiful women in a job that requires them to clean up after violent crimes and other tragic ends, it never does so glibly. The film never veers from the macabre into the ghoulish. It does not trivialize death precisely because the main characters cannot help but see every job as the loss of specific individuals. In this way, Sunshine Cleaning tries to be more than a simple story of female empowerment and self-sufficiency. It takes a more metaphysical route — cleaning and repairing broken souls as well as living spaces. If all this provides perhaps too tidy a resolution for the sisters themselves, so be it.

That those sisters are played by two of the most irresistible screen presences today certainly doesn’t hurt Sunshine Cleaning’s chances of leaving a smile on your face. And it will most likely do so, despite the fact that the end is a bit too quick and tidy, some of the characters a bit too underdeveloped, and some of the storyline left disappointingly unresolved. But then a bit of messiness is exactly why we need professional cleaning in the first place.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.