Cashback

3 1/2 Stars
Worth watching

An independent film written and directed by Sean Ellis, Cashback is his first feature film based on his 18 minute short. The basic plot entails a common romance story, boy breaks up with girl, has hard time getting over it, until he finds the girl of his dreams, there is a misunderstanding but he finds a creative way to get her back. Add great cinematography, cover that basic plot with comedic scenes of buffons, don't forget to splice in tons of nude maxim models and you got yourself "Cashback."
From that last sentence one can assume that this movie is shallow, even more so than porn movies. In my humble opinion, this movie was an abstract film, meant only to show beauty, art, and asthetics, simply a work of art. It uses the story as an excuse to keep us seated for about an hour 40 minutes. This movie seeks to find love, however that realization is only presented at the end of the film. I must admit that for the entirety of the film I assumed it to be about beeauty, how an artist finds and defines beauty, and his lovelife to be either the catalyst to finding his inspiration, stopping time. Now had it been as such, where we are looking through Ben's, the artist's, eyes, then this would have been a much better movie.
The creator of this film also had a problem with unessasary scenes and lack of complexity. Scenes like the soccer scene had almost no connection to the sctual movie. It was obviously there comedic relief. It really should have been shortened. The lack of complexity is pretty obvious. The whole thing revolves around him and all that happened to him, nothing else. I must admit that I found the Beavis and Butthead duo only slightly amusing. Finally, the narration. Film is mainly a show business; more show, less tell. This simple principle would have doubled the interest and kept the focus of most viewers.
Despite its great faults I still declare this a great film worth watching for two reasons. First, this was mainly a one man show, and his first feature at that. Second, the cinematography and editing was awesome. It kept me watching wanting to know what the next eyepopper was going to be.