SUNSHINE CLEANING - shameless cash-in

SUNSHINE CLEANING is a worthless film. The script is derivative, the tone mis-judged and the execution poor.

Essentially, the film is a shameless attempt to cash-in on the sleeper-success of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE by recasting its characters in another setting. Once again we have a family beset by financial crisis and suburban failure. Admittedly, instead of a married couple we have two sisters – one, a high school sweetheart turned mistress and cleaner – the other a troubled college drop-out. But, in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE style, we have a central relationship between an eccentric grandfather and an eccentric grandchild. The plot, such as it is, consists of the two sisters setting a crime-scene clean-up business in order to finance the kid’s private education.

The tone of the film also attempts to ape the black comedy of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE but the script isn’t funny enough for that. Rather, we get a poor attempt to make a light-hearted film about painful subject matter – suicide, drug use and failure.

Finally, there are the difficulties with the execution. Amy Adams is cast as the older sister, but looks and plays younger than Emily Blunt. Emily Blunt’s accent is unsure. And casting Alan Arkin as the eccentric grandfather only confirms the movie’s attempt to capture the same tone as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Technically, the film suffers from a muddy colour palette and uninspired camera-work, relieved only by two exceedingly clumsy pastiche slow-mo shots of the two sisters at the start of the film, in the style of Wes Anderson.

SUNSHINE CLEANING played Sundance 2008 and was released last year in the US. It was released earlier this year in Canada, Sweden, Israel, Greece, the Netherlands and Germany. It is currently on release in Belgium, France, Australia, South Africa and the UK. It opens next week in Denmark, the following week in Singapore and Japan and on August 6th in New Zealand.

London Film Festival Day 4 - AMERICAN TEEN

I had the misfortune of watching AMERICAN TEEN in a double-bill with the brilliant short documentary KIDS + MONEY. Ostensibly covering the same material - modern American teenage life - KIDS + MONEY was everything that AMERICAN TEEN wasn't - insightful, contemporary, disturbing, authentic. By contrast, AMERICAN TEEN seemed stagey, forced, incredible and addied nothing to cinema's treatment of teenage experience since THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

Documentarian Nanette Burstein (THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE) doesn't help her own case by pandering to the social stereotypes she is trying to investigate. In her year in the life of "normal" teenagers in Warsaw, Indiana, she picks four kids to follow who can easily be labelled as the Popular Princess; Jock; Weirdo and Geek. Starting from that premise she engineers/edits footage to comply with those stereotypes.

So Megan Krizmanich, the popular princess is shown to be a superficial bitch - burning a friend's rep by sending a topless photo of her round the school and leaving hateful voice messages on her answerphone. Colin Clemens, the Jock, has essentially no personality and activity off the basketball court. The "weirdo" - a charming kid called Hannah Bailey - is intruded upon in the most callous manner - with Burstein almost following her inside her depresssion. And geek Jake Tussing is shown getting serially dumped and cheated upon by girls, but getting his revenge in video-game fantasies.

This documentary has attracted a lot of controversy as to how far it really was reality TV. It won the documentary award at Sundance, after all, and Burstein has defended it fiercely as being authentic. Frankly I think this misses the point. Whether or not the footage is unmediated (and clearly no footage is ever 100% unmediated), the key point is that it *seems* staged. Burstein has to take responsibility for the fact that her choices - taping reaction shots on either side of a phone call; the use of animation; setting relationships to cheesy love songs as montages - all undermine the documentary feel of the film. I found these devices alienated be from the footage and I found it hard to empathise with these stagey events.

I might have overlooked the staged feel if the documentary had had anything meaningful to say about contemporary teenage life - but frankly this adds nothing to whaat John Hughes said in the 80s.

AMERICAN TEEN played Sundance, where Nanette Burstein won the award for Best Director - Documentary, and London 2008. It opened in the US earlier this year and is currently on release in Japan. It opens in the UK on November 7th and in Australia on November 27th.

THE LAST KISS - unamiable people whine

With Zach Braff's latest film, THE EX, on release, I am reminded that I haven't reviewed THE LAST KISS. This was due to a feeling of indifference and apathy as the end-titles roled. It's a decently acted film, but under-written and ploddingly directed. A bunch of young adults broach that part of life where you finally stop pretending you're still a carefree student and face up to the reality of marriage, children and mortgages. They are written as callow and self-absorbed, which is in some respects a brave choice. For instance, Zach Braff plays a weak-willed man who ditches his earnest pregnant girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett) for a good time with a young university student (Rachel Bilson) and then abandons said student when he gets an attack of conscience. Even the adults in the piece act with a self-obsessed flakiness. Viz Blythe Danner's middle-aged wife who leaves Tom Wilkinson's husband, only to mooch around for a bit and then return

Yes, these characters may be true to life and genuinely unlikeable. Sadly though, they are not written to be interesting. The blame, I suppose must be shared between Gabriele Muccino, who wrote the Italian source film, and Paul Haggis of CRASH fame, who rewrote it for the non-subtitle reading world. Still, Tom Stern creates a memorable visual mood, as one would expect from the DP of FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA.

THE LAST KISS was released in 2006 and is now available on DVD.