Sunshine Cleaning - Review

There are so many superficial similarities between Sunshine Cleaning and that fellow Sundance success, Little Miss Sunshine, that the new movie was probably doomed from the start. It's all too easy for snide critics to point out the cute kid, charming old grandpa played by Alan Arkin, desert setting and quirky family drama, and deduce that Sunshine Cleaning is just another mishmash of indie tropes trying to cash in on the success of that movie with the big yellow van.

While it's true that Sunshine Cleaning indulges in a little too much quirk, and is not as good as Little Miss Sunshine, the new movie starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt has a lot to recommend it, starting with the honest performances from its two leads. As two very different sisters scrabbling out a living in dusty Albuquerque, Blunt and Adams build a believable rapport between them, and each digs deep in their characters to give the audience a view into their difficult, lonely lives.

Adams is Rose, a single mom raising an oddball son (Jason Spevack) by working for a cleaning service, and keeping her social life on hold while she engages in an affair with her married high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn). He's the one who gives her the idea to go into crime scene cleanup, and motivated by the chance to re-imagine herself as an entrepreneur, she talks her slacker sister Norah (Blunt) into joining the business.

Norah and Rose are incredibly inept at first, and the movie indulges a little in some blood-and-guts sight gags before taking the sisters in some unexpected directions thanks to the new job. Rose turns out to be really good at the business, and imbued with some of the can-do spirit from her entrepreneurial dad (Alan Arkin), she uses the business as means to get the rest of her life in order. She ditches the ex, works up the guts to attend a baby shower held by a ritzy former classmate, and starts a very tentative, warm flirtation with the guy who sells their heavy-duty cleaning supplies (Clifton Collins Jr.). Norah, on the other hand, is much more emotionally affected by the crime scenes they clean, and finds herself in a semi-romantic friendship with the daughter (Mary Lynn Rajskub) of a suicide victim.

Megan Holley's screenplay slips into stilted language and awkward coincidence sometimes, especially in the subplot that finds Rose and Norah recovering from their mother's suicide when they were children. Where other parts of the movie capture so much realism, from dingy parties to the tyranny of school principals, it's a ridiculous notion that two sisters struggling to get over a death that happened 25 years earlier would go into crime scene cleanup. As a result some of the key moments of the film, in which Rose and Norah are supposed to have found inner peace and new realizations about themselves, ring hollow and cliched.

But director Christine Jeffs is great with her actors, and takes a light, witty approach to the material that largely steers the movie away from the maudlin. Every time one of the characters does something unbelievable, like talking to her dead mom through a CB radio, Jeffs inserts a clever camera angle or well-timed edit to pull the mood back from the brink. Sunshine Cleaning avoids a tidy ending, and despite being cute redheads, Rose and Norah emerge as genuinely complicated, not always likable characters. Beyond the over-reliance on easy quirks, there's an intent toward real storytelling at the heart of Sunshine Cleaning that sets it above typical indie schmaltz.

Enchanted - Review

Once upon a time Disney was renowned for making cinematic story-telling masterpieces that became instant classics. Lately all they’ve been known for is regurgitating those classics in the form of shameless sequels and ridiculous remakes. With Enchanted they’re still rehashing the past, but this time they’ve gone and done something we haven’t seen them do in a very long time: show a little imagination. And not a second too soon, either. Poor Walt’s corpse could use a break from all that turning over in its grave.

Instead of abusing past characters and plotlines by squeezing them into silly stories about enchanted Christmases or time-traveling evil step-mothers, Enchanted uses a different approach. It takes classic elements of Disney fairytales and mercilessly pokes fun by dipping them into the cold, harsh light that is the real world. While the tongue-in-cheek comedy plays a major role, there’s also a warm, charming story here that makes the movie much more than simple satire.

Giselle (Amy Adams) is a beautiful young woman who spends her days with assorted woodland creatures making dresses and singing hopelessly idyllic songs about the day when she and her true love will find one another. Naturally, the animals can all talk and have an uncanny talent for fashion design. When Giselle is rescued from a troll by the puffy-sleeved, chivalrous-to-a-fault Prince Edward (James Marsden), the two fall immediately and madly in love. Edward proposes and the animals begin frantically building Giselle’s gown for her happily-ever-after wedding, set to take place the very next day.

This first part of the story brings to the big screen something else that we haven’t seen from Disney in a very long time: hand drawn animation. Giselle’s perfect animated world is crafted from the very finest that Disney has to offer, harkening back to the glory days before computer animation came in and wiped out all the hand-drawn warmth and magic. I’m not going to say that the good folks at Pixar haven’t produced some pretty amazing work with their digital wizardry, but I miss the beauty of the old-school animation. Enchanted offers a fleeting remembrance of how good hand-drawn was and could be again.

As she makes her way to the altar, Giselle is side-tracked by Edward’s wicked witch step-mother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon). Fearing that Edward’s marriage will mean she will lose her crown, Narissa decides to eliminate the threat by pushing Giselle down a wishing well which is actually a gateway to the real world. When Edward learns of this, his natural instinct is to launch a rescue mission to save his damsel in distress. Both young lovers are determined to find each other in this bizarre new land, but strange (and hilarious) things happen when the real and fairy tale worlds are thrown together.

For example, despite being in the real world, Giselle still maintains her amazing gift for having the animal kingdom at her beckon call. Of course, New York City is short on fuzzy woodland creatures, so it’s the rats, roaches and one-legged pigeons that arrive to help her with the cleaning and mending. Also, her tendency to burst forth in song when the proper emotional cue line is spoken rubs some the wrong way, and yet people appear out of the woodwork to sing and dance for one of the best live-action musical numbers I’ve seen in a long time.

Before Edward can locate his lost true love, the hopelessly romantic Giselle is rescued from the ravages of New York City by the most romantically jaded man imaginable: Robert (Patrick Dempsey), a divorce lawyer whose wife abandoned him and his daughter years ago. At first I expected their relationship to become the ultimate cliché of cynical vs. idealistic. Instead I was surprised by a sweet love story that touches nicely on finding joy in the midst sorrow and not giving up on loving each other just because you’re not perfect. One of the characters sums the movie up nicely by pointing out that we all go through bad times, but we shouldn’t abandon the good because of them.

Hard core Disney enthusiasts have something else to celebrate besides the great comedy and endearing story. The movie is absolutely littered with nods and bows to all things Disney. Some of them are obvious, some are subtle, but if you’re watching carefully you’ll either see or hear something from another Disney movie in just about every scene. It’s a wonderful gift to fans who really know their stuff. Best of all, the songs and score for the movie come from none-other than the legendary Alan Menken, the man behind the music of some of the best Disney has made.

Roll it all together and you have a magically new fairy-tale with a clever twist. Of course, this momentary blip of creativity doesn’t necessarily mean Disney has learned its lesson. I fully expect Enchanted 2: Narissa’s Revenge to arrive direct-to-DVD summer 2009. Until then we can revel in the bliss of this magnificent anomaly and wish upon a star that it might spark some kind of new life in what used to be the happiest movie studio on earth.

Underdog - Review

Thinking of a live action Underdog made me sad,
But the truth about this movie is: it is not half bad

Let’s be honest. Underdog is probably one of the least likely candidates for a movie adaptation. The cartoon super-hero is thirty years past his prime, existing over that time in just over 100 episodes that represent what animation has to look like when it’s churned out on a weekly basis. Yet, strangely, somehow the canine crusader has been targeted for a live-action summer blockbuster movie. Even stranger is the fact that the resulting picture is an enjoyable family picture that has something to offer to both Underdog newcomers and fans who have stuck with the show over the course of its life.

Clearly crediting its origins, Underdog opens with a montage of classic cartoon clips showing the dog hero saving the day against his villains, most specifically Simon Barsinister, the evil genius mastermind. Underdog himself (voiced by Jason Lee) tells us this is his story, but that the cartoon clips are getting ahead of the rest of the story. Transition to the live action picture which serves as an origin story for the super hero.

Originally a failed-police dog, the hero who would be Underdog is captured for experimentation by one of Doctor Barsinister’s henchmen. Before the genius can inject our hero with DNA, the dog attempts to escape, resulting in a lab accident that renders the dog with super powers and disfigures Barsinister (Peter Dinklage). Yes, it’s one of those stories where the hero and villain are born from the same incident, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t detract from the story, particularly because Barsinister isn’t exactly a nice guy to begin with.

The dog is picked up by Dan Unger (James Belushi), a former police officer who quit the force when his wife died. He tries to give the dog to his son, Jack (Alex Neuberger), as yet another gesture in their strained relationship, naming the dog Shoeshine because he constantly licks their shoes. Slowly Jack and Shoeshine form a strong relationship, made even stronger when Jack discovers his dog’s secret powers. Jack urges Shoeshine to become a hero, but all the dog wants is a steady home where he doesn’t feel like a reject. When Simon Barsinister rears his ugly head again, there’s no choice to but to save the day as Underdog!

Although this is a super hero origin story, there’s quite a bit more to the movie than just that. It’s also the story of a boy and his dog, the story of a dysfunctional family looking to rebuild, and a story of underdogs on a more literal level, between the police dog who failed, to the police dad who quit, to Jack who is an underdog in school. Each of the stories gets a fair amount of time in the spotlight without feeling like any of them are robbing the movie of its super hero basis. It’s a well crafted story that deserves praise for writers Adam Rifkin, Joe Piscatella, and Craig A. Williams.

On a performance level the movie is a bit varied. Jason Lee provides that deep, insightful narrative voice over that has worked so well on “My Name is Earl,” only without the Southern twang (and, frankly, for a more insightful character). Patrick Warburton gives a typical Warbutonish performance as evil sidekick Cad. Most of the digitally enhanced animal performances are pretty good, although for some reason Polly Pureheart’s dog-talk movements felt very wrong compared to others. Only Peter Dinklage truly rises above with a performance that begins very subdued and builds like a volcano. Regardless of the situation, Dinklage sells his character, making it clear that he took this just as serious as any of his other roles. On the flip side, just the appearance of James Belushi makes it hard to believe he’s supposed to have been this well decorated cop. He looks older and very, very tired (the bags under his eyes could have gotten separate billing they are so dominant). Alex Neuberger is a fairly new performer and that inexperience shows, although it’s easy to write that off to his youth.

For real Underdog fans this movie is chock-full of goodies. From the massive collateral damage created by Underdog, especially with his inability to land, to his rhyming couplets and his signature phrase (“There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!”) there are lots of things to look for. Even the original source of Underdog’s powers, the secret energy pill, is there in a fashion. None of it is done in a demeaning manner or played tongue-in-cheek like so many other adaptations. It’s just there for you to catch if you are familiar with the franchise, and the way they are played left me grinning. If you aren’t as much a fan, there are still some fun allusions to other origin stories like Spider-Man and Superman, and even a totally clever nod to Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.

As is sadly becoming standard for family movies, there are a few minor issues common to the genre. There are probably more references to dogs eating crap than there really need to be, and the climax of the movie comes to a screeching halt so the family can have a tender moment that solves all of their problems. As a super hero movie, however, this picture is actually a lot better than I expected and surpasses some of the more mundane origin stories out there. As a movie, Underdog is as unlikely, and as surprisingly successful, as the hero himself.