Stars: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Steve Zahn
Running time: 91 mins
Rating: ★★★
"FROM the producers of Little Miss Sunshine" is the proud boast on the poster and press material for this quirky US comedy. The two films also share a star in Alan Arkin – here cast as the father of sisters Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt) under the direction of Christine Jeffs.
This is certainly a cheerier outing than her last movie Sylvia, a biopic about tragic poet Sylvia Plath starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
Rose is a thirtysomething single mother who works as a maid. Her sister Norah is still living at home with their father, a salesman with a history of ill-fated get rich schemes. Rose needs money to get her son into a better school and hits on the idea of setting up a crime scene clean-up company.
Soon the two women are busy scrubbing away the blood and guts left by murders and suicides.
It’s a messy job but someone has to do it and, as far as I’m aware, it’s something we haven’t seen in movies before.
The point isn’t so much finding out who committed the crimes as watching the developing relationship and friction between the two women whose sisterly feelings aren’t always of the good kind.
Adams shows herself adept at handling both comedy and drama, as she’s already demonstrated in Enchanted and Doubt. British actress Blunt, first seen in low budget Brit flick Summer Of Love, continues her conquest of Hollywood as the other, less wholesome sister.
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