Well...Um...

Cashback (2006, Sean Ellis)



Cashback is a little short film that got an academy award nomination. The director then decided to turn his little short into a feature. With a very promising visual style that seems to be done by everyone these days gives it a pretty look but yet the project falls within the characters.

The film is about an art student who breaks up with a girl. The art student can also stop time so he can undress girls and watch them. Yes, the same exact idea that magneto had for the Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant show "Extras". Now here is the kicker, this film takes it seriously. A voice over goes throughout the film that is suppose to sound very meaningful and artistic but yet just sounds like a pervert stopping time to check out chicks naked.

Sean Ellis fills his film with characters that really don't belong in the same universe as the main character. He gives his main character two co workers that seem straight out of a teen comedy and another third member that thinks he's a ninja. Yeah, this film is everywhere. It really is a mess of a film that tries to depend on a voice over narration to give it depth. I don't want to say it but this is one of the few films where you can see the director actually trying really hard to make something brilliant out of a stupid idea.

Cashback could have been something good if pulled off just right. It just goes to show you what a director thinks he can do when he gets a nomination for his short film. I really wouldn't talk so much shit about this film but it really did piss me off. Sean Ellis obviously copies Gondry in sequences that don't really need a "Gondry touch" to them. While Michel Gondry uses his crazy in camera tricks to push the story along, Ellis uses them for eye candy not eye protein.

Grade C-