Sunshine Cleaning

Another Sundance favourite, another quirky indie-by-numbers. Dysfunctional family: check. Life lessons learned through adversity: check. Alan Arkin as a loveable curmudgeon: check. In fact, any film labelled "quirky" should be treated with kid gloves these days. The premise itself sounds like things could actually be inventive and entertaining - sisters set up as crime scene cleaners - but alas cutesy wins out over anything more gritty. There's the seriously annoying son of one sister. I think he's supposed to be adorably troubled but personally I just wanted to slap him. Then there's the cringe-inducing use of a CB radio as a way of talking to the dead. If only iy had had the nerve to be a full-on black comedy, it could have been so much better.