Review of Cashback (2007) by Annelies S — 22 Nov 2009

While it has interesting concepts and ideas, the whole of CASHBACK is too on the nose and too narcissistic. It's a mopey nice guy pondering girls movie in the vein of HIGH FIDELITY, featuring a narrator who muses on past relationships, only the guy doing it is less of a hipster than John Cusack and instead needs some Zoloft and Ny-Quil.

It's mildly hilarious that the young boy version of his character is just as insightful and angsty as his twenty-something modern self. The female love interest feels like the perfect girl that exists in the head of writer/director Sean Ellis, something Zach Braff did in GARDEN STATE and it was lame then too.

Pointless comedy set-pieces fuck up the pacing and there are some ideas that are touched on but never explored, causing one to wonder why they are in the movie in the first place. It works visually for the most part despite some hiccups with the time-stopping effects and the cinematography looks good.

There's potential here, it's just a bit too selfish and uninteresting at the end of the day.