Cashback - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Art student ben develops insomnia after going through a painful break-up. To kill time he joins the late shift at the local supermarket. They all have their own time-killing devices & bens allows him to see the beauty of the everyday world - especially sharon the quiet checkout girl. Studio: Magnolia Pict Hm Ent Release Date: 12/31/2007 Run time: 98 minutes

Amazon.com
A slight but likable British comedy-fantasy with a touch of naughtiness, Cashback is an expanded version of director Sean Ellis' Oscar-nominated short film of the same name about a bored supermarket clerk who discovers that he has the ability to stop time. Sean Biggerstaff (from the Harry Potter franchise) is Ben, a lovelorn young man whose chronic insomnia (due to a bad breakup) forces him to bury himself in pointless and repetitive work at a local grocery store. Once there, boredom causes him to believe that he can stop time, and he enjoys long and languid fantasies about undressing and sketching the female shoppers. But reality intrudes in the form of recollections of his troubled past, as well as the lovely presence of fellow clerk Sharon (Emilia Fox), who offers the promise of love in the real world. A gentle and artfully directed independent film, Cashback doesn't run very deep in terms of emotion, but the special effects are clever, the cast quirky and amusing, and its premise is an appealing mix of softcore reverie and boyish longing. - Paul Gaita

Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Meditation on beauty September 29, 2007
70 out of 72 found this review helpful

This is one of the most remarkable films I've seen in quite some time. In fact, it has lurched into the pantheon of my all-time favorite movies! It is a somewhat odd mixture of diverse ingredients, with elements of Office Space - Special Edition with Flair (Widescreen Edition) and High Fidelity and even some allusions to Gladiator (Widescreen Edition) thrown in just for fun. On top of that, much of it makes you feel like you're in the Twilight Zone, yet there's some downright slap-stick comedy that is stirred in for one amazing concoction of a story!

The DVD details the life of an artist (Sean Biggerstaff) who is having an awful time getting over his ex-girlfriend who just dumped him. He's having such a rough time, in fact, that he can't sleep. I mean, literally - he has the worst case of insomnia the world has ever seen. Finally, he gets a job working 3rd shift at a supermarket, just for something to do.

While there he meets up with a very pretty cashier (Emilia Fox) and some just plain crazy co-workers. He looks at even something as banal as working in a grocery store as being an "artistic" (if not metaphysical?) experience, and finds himself gravitating towards the lovely blonde cashier.

At the base, what this movie seems to be "all about" to me is a sort of meditation on feminine beauty, and the way that (straight) men perceive that beauty. Yes, this includes the female nude, but in an artistic way as opposed to being sleazy. The film is full of useful flashbacks that help us understand the evolution of an artist's perception of women. Many of these flashbacks,in fact, I could relate to in my own life.

Be warned that this is a very "different" sort of movie. Being an independent film, it goes well off of the beaten-track, and to me that's a good thing. While I'm sure there are plenty of people who will watch this and say "Boy, that was weird" I'm also confident that there are many who will say "Wow, I'd like to see more introspective flicks like that!" I belong to the latter group.

4 out of 5 stars

Garden State meets Showgirls July 12, 2007
49 out of 58 found this review helpful

In 2006, the short film Cashback was nominated for a best live-action short Oscar. Writer/Director Sean Ellis then went on to spin the short about a night-shift worker in a supermarket into a feature about a night-shift worker in a supermarket. Using the same actors, and even most of the footage from the original short, Ellis adds a painful breakup to our hero's life, which brings on a case of incurable insomnia. Looking for a way to cash in on his inability to sleep, art student Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff) applies for a job at an all-night supermarket.

Anyone remember Saved By the Bell and Zack Morris's envy-worthy ability to utter the phrase "time-out" and thus freeze time? In Cashback Ben has this same ability, but he uses it in a much more libidinous way: to undress attractive women in the grocery store he works at and then draw their nude figures. Granted, these gratuitous scenes are not the crux of the film, but they're likely to be the most memorable to most viewers. As the camera slowly pans over (and back over) the striking nude female forms, the audience is to see Ben as an intrepid young artist, not as a peeping Tom. The artistic presentation of the women, and the flashbacks to Ben's childhood experiences do their best to give this impression, but the extended length of the scenes and their lack of importance to the final outcome of the story, implies a hint of exploitation rather than simple artistic expression. For the most extensive look at the indelible female form since Striptease, Cashback has cornered the market. Cleverly disguised in the form of a romantic comedy, Cashback manages to comes across as an artsy British Garden State meets Showgirls.

With an endearing cast of characters, including Emilia Fox as Ben's new love interest at the supermarket, Cashback offers an intriguing story exploring the complicated topics of relationships and self-expression through surrealistic methods, including freezing and fast-forwarding time. At different points, the world is swirling around Ben, faster than he can keep up, while at others everything stops and he can examine the world between the moments that we live. Eventually he comes to realize that there are times when fast-forward and freeze frame are on equal footing; no matter what, the past can't be undone.

Cashback is the first feature from director Sean Ellis, and while it's clear that he has enormous talent in the fields of both writing and directing, it's also clear that he has much room to grow as an artist. At times the film begins to meander a bit, and points that seem to have real significance to the story are left by the wayside as new plotlines are picked up. This causes the film to play out almost episodically, like several short films strapped together. This is only fitting, considering that Cashback started as a short. Audiences will not be disappointed by the message of Cashback: "Sometimes love is hiding between the seconds of your life", but they may find themselves wondering about the presentation of the message.

4 out of 5 stars

Underrated Comedy August 13, 2007
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

This is Sean Ellis's Academy Award nominated short film Cashback expanded into feature film. Cashback is a comedy first and foremost, and it is about an art school student and aspiring artist named Ben (Sean Biggerstaff), who recently suffered a breakup with his girlfriend of several years. Because of the break up Ben cannot sleep for over the course of several weeks and this is the time period of Ben's life that we see and he narrates for us. Ben gets a job at a grocery store to pass his time. He often imagines stopping time completely and creating his still life art. In fact, as the film goes one we begin to wonder if he really can stop time or not. Soon Ben begins to fall for a clerk named Sharon (Emilia Fox) and his episodic insomnia gets resolved.

Cashback is rich with great characters and some hilarious moments. Ben is dry enough to fittingly suffer through his many experiences, all the while his flat reactions to these other brighter characters is comedic in and of itself. Ben's friend from childhood Shaun (Sean Higgins) is an amusing womanizer who seems completely at peace with the fact that most women will harshly reject his obnoxious advances. Ben's boss Jenkins (Stuart Goodwin) is an absurdly arrogant person that also seems entirely unwavered by his failures to pursue Sharon, or even win a football game against a competing grocery store. Barry and Matt (Michael Dixon and Michael Lambourne) are two colleagues of Ben's who are constantly being ridiculously mischievous and make for some of the film's best laughs. Another colleague of Ben's is Brian (Marc Pickering) whose kung-fu training defines him as a person. This is obviously a character-driven comedy, but it is the development of these characters that makes the more subdued drama work to its advantage.

The short film, which is on this DVD as well, is basically comprised of the scene in the film where we first meet and establish these colorful characters. It is the most engaging part of the movie. The only difference between the segment in the short film and the long version is that the long version is slightly edited for sexual content. I found it strange that in the short film all the girl's are clean shaven but in the long version they suddenly have pubic hair. Nevertheless, the feature film sliding by the MPAA with just an R-rating is still a wonderful surprise. The standards have seemingly changed and perhaps the MPAA sees nudity as more pleasing to the eyeballs, as opposed to seeing someone's eyeballs being torn out of their head with pliers. No matter, you get both versions with this DVD and the film's primary function isn't as a skin flick to begin with. It is actually sort of disappointing to hear about all the nude scenes anytime I hear about this movie, although it would be silly not to point out that the nudity involves some of the most beautiful women in the world (e.g. Hayley Marie Coppin, Irene Bagach, Keeley Hazell).

I've heard that director Sean Ellis is working on a horror film next with Lena Headey. That has me curious because Ellis shows more technical ability in Cashback than we are used to seeing in most comedies and I believe he has given me reason to look out for his next project. Cashback is both more entertaining and more vulgar than most comedies out there and it deserves credit for that. It doesn't seem to be getting the exposure I think the film warrants as it is probably very accessible to an American audience. I hope it catches on as I enjoyed it very much.

2 out of 5 stars

the secondary characters are more interesting than the principals September 9, 2007
11 out of 21 found this review helpful

**1/2

The small British film "Cashback" is a sporadically engaging, but ultimately unsatisfying rumination on art, love and the relative nature of time.

The idea for the movie is, in many respects, better than the movie itself. Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff) is an art student whose girlfriend has just broken up with him after years together as a couple. Ben is so emotionally devastated by the rejection that he becomes virtually a dead man walking, an incurable insomniac who goes literally whole nights without sleeping. To assuage his pain and to make the time pass more quickly, he takes a job working the late night shift at a local supermarket. While there, he develops the sudden ability to make time "freeze" at will, kind of like in that old "Twilight Zone" episode, "A Kind of a Stopwatch," or the movie "Clockstoppers" (though Ben doesn't need anything as mundane as a magical time piece to accomplish the feat). Most of the movie is spent chronicling Ben's interactions with his amusingly eccentric co-workers as well as with the beautiful young cashier named Sharon (Emilia Fox) with whom he falls in love.

For all its undeniable cleverness and charm, "Cashback" never really finds a way to turn its fantastical premise into anything other than an overused gimmick. Indeed, it's hard to tell what exactly Ben thinks he's accomplishing when he pauses everyone in mid action. It doesn't even make much sense within the context of the movie's own storyline, since stopping everything dead in its tracks is certainly no way to make time go FASTER, which is what Ben, in voiceover recitation, keeps telling us he wants to do.

The movie is actually at its most enjoyable and authentic when it drops all the silly time-stopping shenanigans and pretentious philosophizing and simply shows us the day-to-day activities of Ben and his fellow employees at the market. One of the themes of the movie is that time moves more slowly when we are trapped in tedious jobs and activities, yet, ironically, it is those very on-the-job activities that are of most interest here. Much of the credit for that goes to the delightful performances of Stuart Goodwin, Michael Dixon and Michael Lambourne as Ben's loopy male co-workers. They are certainly more interesting as people than Sharon and even Ben himself are.

Sean Ellis has written and directed the movie with a great deal of elegance and style, utilizing sophisticated "freezing" techniques, a smoothly-gliding dolly camera, and a classical music score to great effect. The pacing is often tedious, however, and we sometimes feel less like a witness to Ben's bizarre time-stopping ability than a victim of it. There were certainly times when I wished I had the power to make this movie go faster.

Part of the problem may be that the material was originally made into a short in 2004, then expanded into this feature length film in 2006. That may explain the feeling we get that the movie is stretching itself further than perhaps it is able to go. Still, there's much that is good in even this elongated "Cashback," although it certainly leaves one wondering whether the shorter version might not in fact be the better way to go.

2 out of 5 stars

Cheap as Chav ... February 24, 2008
7 out of 20 found this review helpful

A sluggish, meat-grinder of a film that sets up the following themes:

1.An interesting narrative about Insomnia: but fails badly and constantly works to redeem, or rather replay itself, as if it somehow worked the first time you saw and heard it.
2.A tale about lost love: that never really gels or comes around or convinces you that there's nothing more in the Art School world than puppy love.
3.Growing up as a boy in England: that doesn't ever endear itself to the viewer at all and only serves to make the film longer and not any more interesting.
4.Working at an incredibly dull lint-ball-per-hour job: but abandons it as soon as it becomes interesting to show you some gratuitous football.
5.An Art School Confidential plot: that again - fails like all the other Art School movies.
6.A Tim Curry-esque (Matt) comic relief: that is only slightly realized and comes off like luke-warm weak tea on a cold day.
7.An obscure but trendy soundtrack: that doesn't do much for the film or give it lifts where it's so badly needed but rather drags it down into murky cesspools, making you wonder: Who scored this?
8.Character montage scenes that are as dull as they are acted.
9.Donnie Darko-esque time warp movements that seem contrived and out of place.
10. A poor Man's Robert Caryle / Vinnie Jones used cheaply as a catalyst to create activity within an otherwise slow moving screenplay.
11.A "Good Lord" Great Expectations / Donnie Darko / A Life Less Ordinary style ending, that is just incredibly contrite and never really decides which one.

I guess if this is what it takes to raise a Grant from The British Film Council of the Arts (or enter any endowment entity here), then to quote an old Christian Slater movie: "So Be It." I can't hate you for trying to come up and get out.

I paid $9.99 for this `movie' at Target but I saw it a few days later in $4.99 bins at Wal-Maze. If you were in this film, made this film, wrote this film or distributed it - then please mail me CASH BACK. My contact info is readily accessible.

The failure of this movie is trying to tell and do everything well, while never really doing one thing very good at all.

This film makes me feel ashamed to listen to my old Pulp Albums now for some reason. But for the record: Jarvis Cocker rules.

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