( CNN ) -- More timely now than when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008 , `` Sunshine Cleaning , '' an agreeable , midrange independent film , makes light work of heavy burdens . Amy Adams gets to work cleaning up as Rose in the indie comedy `` Sunshine Cleaning . '' Sisters Rose ( Amy Adams ) and Norah ( Emily Blunt ) struggle with menial jobs and periods of unemployment . Together , they 're also coping with the nasty emotional residue of their mom 's long-ago suicide -- a trauma that is likely responsible for their current troubles . Self-esteem is n't a strong suit for either of them . As `` Sunshine Cleaning '' dawns , they 're both scraping by . If Norah is out of work before we 've settled into our popcorn , she 's not overly concerned by her situation . Rose , on the other hand , is desperate to graduate from cleaning other people 's middle-class homes . It 's not just that the humiliation of laundering for her old cheerleader team is getting her down ; she needs the money to put her `` difficult '' kid ( Jason Spevack ) into the kind of school that will give him a chance . It 's Rose 's married boyfriend -- and old high school sweetheart -- Mac ( Steve Zahn ) who spies a new niche for the sisters . A homicide detective , he 's watching the cleaning crew bag the blown brains of a shotgun enthusiast when he overhears the proprietor of the building grousing about the `` three grand '' it 's costing him . Granted , blood and intestinal juices are n't everybody 's cup of tea , but that kind of return sure beats washing Mrs. Johansson 's drapes for $ 30 an hour . `` CSM : Crime Scene Maid '' is n't a job you 're likely to find down at the employment office , but somebody must be doing the dirty work . Rose and Norah -- incorporated -- find that the stench takes some getting used to , and there 's a whole new arsenal of cleaning fluids to master , but they get to work with a positive attitude and like to think they 're doing their bit to put the world right . From this unusual setup , the movie might have skewed in any number of ways . The sisters might have uncovered evidence of corruption and murder , for instance , perhaps implicating Mac ? `` Sunshine Cleaning '' is nowhere near so abrasive or generic as such a scenario . Written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs ( `` Sylvia '' ) , it instead puts a sympathetic , gentle comic gloss on the characters ' fundamentally forgivable foibles and imperfections . Norah tracks down the daughter of one suicide ( Mary Lynn Rajskub ) to present her with mementos that should have been destined for the junkyard . Blunt 's edgy performance keeps us guessing . Norah 's a bit of a flake , but she 's animated by her anger and her rebellious streak . If she 's hard to read , it 's because she 's still young and does n't know herself yet . Rose is easier to understand . She 's determined to seize this chance to dig herself out of the hole and recapture the promise she used to see in herself . Adams has a knack for putting a brave face on things -- something about the way she tilts her chin up while her mouth goes in three directions at once . She keeps our rooting interest in Rose alive even when her choices seem misguided or naive . A subplot concerning Rose 's son bonding with Joe ( Alan Arkin ) , the sisters ' lovable but infuriating father ( you know the kind : He buys bulk orders of shrimp off the back of a truck ) tips us too far into the realm of indie quirk . The character is a useful sounding board , and an amusing grouch , but it 's just about impossible to imagine this man bringing up these girls . Ironically , for a movie that 's marketed with the one-liner `` Life 's a messy business , '' Holley 's script has been polished to within an inch of its life . Emotions are experienced most vividly when they 're raw , but in `` Sunshine Cleaning , '' feelings come filtered through neat-and-tidy grace notes . The film flirts with dangerous material , but it 's too intent on putting the sunny side up to get its hands dirty . The way director Jeffs tells it , not only is suicide painless it can be positively feel-good . That 's not to say there is n't a lot to enjoy in this well-acted and humanistic comedy . Buoyed by its up-and-coming stars and its optimistic message , it should do very nicely with discriminating audiences . ... It might even clean up .
Tom Charity : Up-and-coming stars , optimistic message buoy `` Sunshine Cleaning '' Two struggling sisters become a crime-scene cleanup crew . The film is based on the novel by John Grisham and was directed by Clint Eastwood.