Indie by Numbers

I have just watch a film i really hated. It was indie by numbers. It was formulaic to the point of insult. It was bereft of true feeling in it's inception and execution. It was god awful.

Sunshine Cleaners - From the *producers* who brought you Little Miss Sunshine.

Right there, that's it the whole reason why this is an awful film, it's not the Director, Writer, or any other member of the creative team bringing you this film, it's the PRODUCERS.

That means it's the sweaty-palmed money-men thinking:

"If we touch their hearts, they'll give us money."

I just don't want my heart fingered by the greasy digits of some Hollywood financier.

This film was designed to cash in. That's it. NO real story behind it. They just want to make some money. Nothing wrong with that. Except as a reason for making a film. It's total balls. Because it means the work has no soul and all the decision on this pic have clearly been made with nothing but an eagle eye on the demographics. This is a film that is dead from the inside out.

The lead actress spend the 95% of the time about to burst into tears, and it's meant to make you identify with her, because yeah Life's Hard, but all it does is get to the point where it actually moves through being annoying, stupid, and ridiculous into being BORING. Like does she even have another mode of operating her face?

The structure is a messy mish-mash of nothing happening, emotional MacGuffinery, and blazingly obvious cliché. All server up by a script which goes -

Girl1: Emotional Claptrap - CLUNK

Girl2: Predictable Angst - CLANG

Girl1: Emotional Claptrap - CLUNK

Girl2: Predictable Angst - CLANG

Every one of the characters appears drawn from the My First Movie Script Workbook, the Nice Guy Geeky Losser Love Interest (spiced by having a missing arm, jesus), the Unfaithful-Shlock-Jock-Cop, the More Successful High School Friend, The Bad Girl Sister, The Incompetent Old Man, The Cute Kid of goodness sake, these character's are so transparently vacuous they're not even TWO dimensional. One dimesion, that's all you're getting with this film, characters as point on a graph.

As if not annoying enough, the scenes these terrible creations enact are also text book dross. Here for your delight is a run down of the scenes in the film:
The Life isn't working out scene, the Big Idea Scene, the Arkward Sub-plot scene, the Crass Epiphany scene, the bloody Initial-Difficulties-Into-Eventual-Success-MONTAGE scene (a bloody montage, get out of town you hacks), the Crisis scene, the Positive Resolution scene and eventually this lesson in how not to make a movie clatters to a halt with the Multi-Character Snapshot Happy-Hopeful/Open Conclusion scene. AAAARRRRGGGHHH!

At least it was short.