Cashback

Starring: Sean Biggerstaff, Emilia Fox, Shaun Evans
Directed by: Sean Ellis
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
2006

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A storeclerk (Sean Biggerstaff) who has trouble sleeping since breaking up with his girlfriend discovers he has the ability to stop time. This helps him as he begins to fall for a fellow coworker (Emilia Fox).

Review:

Tim: Cashback is the feature length film from the Oscar-nominated short film of the same name. I have no doubt that this movie worked well as a short film- it works considerably less well as a full length movie. It is just a bit too pretentious, wandering, and odd to be considered a good movie. I certainly appreciate some of the more unique approaches the film takes, but these are too little to make a difference.

The movie feels like a collection of different movies, jumbled into one. We have a romantic dramedy about love lost and new love found. We have a sci-fi-ish movie about a young man who can freeze time. We have a few other odds and ends, which somehow all ended up in the same movie. This gives the film a disjointed feeling that it can never really shake. This is probably because none of these aspects works very well together.

The cast is at least decent, but there aren't any real standouts. Sean Biggerstaff (great name, by the way) is okay in the lead role. He doesn't do anything to alienate the audience, but he doesn't do anything to endear us to him, either. Emilia Fox gives a good performance as well. I thought her presence was a welcome one, and she works well with the rest of the cast. After these two, the talent level drops way down, and we have various degrees of lukewarm to bad actors filling out the rest of the cast.

My biggest problem with Cashback is just that it tries so hard to be an important little film about something. It came across as an "artsy" "independent" movie meant to make an emotional impact, but it fails miserably in this regard. This movie is almost completely devoid of emotion. It made no impact on me whatsoever, when everything about it was geared to do that. This is the major flaw of the film. Yes, there are a few beautiful moments- I really liked the snow scene at the end, for example. However, these are too few and far between, bridged by scenes that feel ripped from other, better movie. I understand the appeal here and the reason this movie was made, but I have to say that some movies aren't meant for feature length films, and Cashback should have stayed a short.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



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