February 8, 2009: Review of “Sunshine Cleaners”
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Those of you who know me also know what I like in a movie.
As far as I’m concerned, a movie only needs two elements, which are:
1) Zombies.
2) Explosions.
Any movie which incorporates these time-honored themes gets a decayed thumbs-up from me. Any movie which combines them by featuring exploding zombies gets a place on my Hallowed Shelf of Blu-Ray Films.
What can I say; I’m a purist, an elitist, if you will.
Now, if I love zombie apocalypse movies, I loathe their thematic and spiritual antithesis, which is of course the ‘chick flick.’ If a movie focuses on relationships and character and matters of the heart, odds are I’m already sneaking into the next room, because even reruns of ‘Dragnet’ are inherently superior to “When Harry Met sally” or “Out of Africa” or whatever the current titles are. Honestly, those things make my flesh crawl. After a solid half hour of whining and emoting, I wouldn’t view it as redemption if the entire cast contracted zombiesm and lurched their way into a massive explosion at an A-bomb factory. There is no cure for that amount of heart-warming human drama.
Which brings me to the movie “Sunshine Cleaners.”
You haven’t seen it yet. Nyah nyah na nyah nyah. I have, because I caught a special pre-release screening of it at the Oxford Film Festival last Thursday night. It won’t hit the theaters until sometime in April.
And, much to my surprise, I’m going to tell one and all that they really ought to plop down the six bucks and see the thing.
“Sunshine Cleaners” is good. Very good. Good in the same way “Casablanca” and “The Maltese Falcon” and the 1936 version of “A Christmas Carol” are good, which is that the movie draws you in and makes you feel something about what the characters are going through. There’s no sentimental emotional fat on this pony — it’s all go, and even a zombie-thrillin’ Romero freak like me got swept up and carried along for the ride.
What’s it about?
Okay. You’ve got a chick — yeah, a chick — stuck in a dead end job and a dead-end life. She’s got a screw-up sister and a failed salesman/con man as a father, and a kid who gets in trouble for licking a teacher’s ankle. It’s not a Hallmark moment, or I’d have bolted, but it’s also not done in that sit-com friendly way that just makes you *sure* these zany but lovable misfits are going to ultimately triumph.
Everybody who acts in the thing, even the kid, is good. Don’t ask me who they were; Alan Arkin was the only one I recognized. But I’ll be seeing them again.
The aforementioned chick, desperate for cash, starts cleaning up brain-splattered crime scenes (no, it doesn’t dwell on gore), with the help of her sister, the screw-up. Dad watches the kid, who should be in school but isn’t.
And some pretty amazing things happen along the way. This is not a everybody-lives-happily-ever-after flick. Everything isn’t wrapped up tidily in weddings and roses at the end. People don’t get magically fixed. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much; it never took the easy way out.
I don’t believe in spoiling plots and I certainly won’t say much more than I already have.
I went to see it because I mistakenly thought it was a documentary film about a crime clean-up agency. I realized it wasn’t instantly, resigned myself to an hour and a half of weeping and hugging and long meaningful gazes backed up by stirring string instrumentals, but instead I got a true rarity — an intelligent, funny, touching movie about people I cared for.
And not a zombie in sight. Now this doesn’t mean I’m getting soft, people, so don’t expect me to start crowing about the great characterizations in “The Young and the Restless” anytime soon. Because what soap operas need, really need, are hordes of flesh-eating zombies. And explosions.
Lots of big explosions…