Sunshine Cleaning is a small indie film that hopes to entice you into the cinema with the subliminal promise that here is another Little Miss Sunshine. It’s got sunshine in the title, Alan Arkin in the film (once again as an irrepressible grandad), loser parents and a cute kid facing an unkind world. Directed by Christine Jeffs (Sylvia), Sunshine Cleaning rolls up its sleeves and sets out with ruthless efficiency to tick all the boxes, hit all your buttons and tug on your heart. But instead of something fresh and funny, this film is as formulaic and empty as any Hollywood blockbuster.

At the heart of the story are the Lorkowski sisters: responsible Rose (Amy Adams) and good-for-nothing Norah (Emily Blunt). Rose is a struggling single mom who cleans for a living. When her young son, Oscar (Jason Spevack), is expelled from school, Rose has to earn more money to get him into a private school. When her detective lover tells her she can earn good money cleaning up crime scenes, she and Norah get to work.

On the plus side, Sunshine Cleaning has two talented actresses, Adams and Blunt, in the lead roles. They are as good as you'd expect, despite the weakness of Megan Holley’s screenplay. As characters, Rose and Norah are essentially clichés, caught in the familiar hardships of being a single mother (Rose) and in the shadows of a childhood tragedy (Norah).

Consider Rose. She begins her day in front of the mirror, reciting the mandatory platitudes of positive thinking: you are a strong, powerful winner, she declares. Of course, it’s the empty boast of the loser, and we watch her positive face sink into sadness. Hers is the familiar tale of the high-school glory girl, the pretty cheerleader who dated the football star and went on to live a life of quiet desperation and loud disappointment. No husband, lousy job, no prospects: she even has a lover who, we are told, will never leave his wife! She asks, why don’t men ever pick me for marriage? Why am I no good at anything? And then declares: “I’m a loser.” There’s nothing here that’s particular to Rose — every disappointed housewife and hopeful waitress in films has the same sad story.

Norah fares no better. She is your classic screw-up, a girl who can’t hold down a job and is totally irresponsible when it comes to looking after Oscar. Then again, her dad, Joe (Arkin), with his crazyget-rich schemes that always fail, is not much of a role model either.

As for Oscar, he’s your typical dysfunctional-family kid. Talk about cute: he gets expelled from school for licking things, including the teacher’s legs and bits of furniture. How quirky is that? The school wants to put him on drugs, and I for one agree with it.

Clearly, the Lorkowskis are an All-American Dysfunctional Family, and these days no indie film is complete without one. (Arkin barks away in exactly the same manner as he did in Little Miss Sunshine.) Maybe they were once a necessary corrective to all those shiny, happy fantasy families from the 1950s, but now they’ve become as divorced from reality as the Waltons.

Sunshine Cleaning has neither a snappy, hip stylishness to it nor a chord-striking authenticity. It’s a film whose knowledge of ordinary people comes from other indie films, not from life. Even the quirkiness of the characters sounds contrived. Consider the scene where, at night, Oscar gets hold of the CB radio mike in his mother’s cleaning van and starts speaking to the great beyond, asking such questions as: “What was I before I was born? What happens when we die? If you already live in heaven, where do you go when you die?” It’s a film-maker’s idea of a touching-kid moment.

What gives the film its offbeat credentials is the crime-scene cleaning work of the two sisters. We see them having to mop up bathrooms splattered with blood and tidy bedrooms full of the detritus and stench of death. These scenes are mostly played for their yuck potential, and not for tragedy, but that doesn’t stop Rose from claiming that the service they provide actually “helps people”.

If this were a truly indie film, Rose’s assertion would be shown to be the hollow boast of a desperate and deluded woman. But Sunshine Cleaning wants to portray downbeat lives with upbeat resolutions. Beneath its unconventional surface beats a conservative heart, with its celebration of how individual entrepreneurship can lead to closer family ties, personal responsibility, financial security and single-mom empowerment. Alan Sugar and his apprentices should love it.

15, 91 mins

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