I now know better.
The story is charmingly simple. Ben, a young art student, gets dumped and as a result, has lost the ability to sleep. He decided to trade his idle time for the overnight shift at a grocery store. Turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the graveyard shift is full of some odd characters. But our main man Ben? Well, he might be the oddest.
In the section of the movie I loved the most (well, outside the glorious nudity), Ben details the lengths that each employee goes to to make the the time fly by. Each person's trick is increasingly bizarre, but as someone currently getting paid to watch others work I devoured these bits. Anyway, young Ben has come up with the best trick of all. He has discovered that, for him, time goes fastest when it is frozen. Yes, rather unbelievable (yet portrayed convincingly) Ben can freeze time.
But remember, Ben isn't a cartoon duck. Ben has no interest in winning a baseball game with his magical power. Ben's an art student. Who loves the female form. Ben decides to freeze time and undress the implausibly hot women that shop at his grocery store and sketch their nude figures.
Read that again. Go ahead, I'll wait.
While the initial twenty minutes or so was kind of like staring into the sun, Cashback settles into an intriguing little movie. It's full of small-film quirk, and perhaps relies on the time freezing trick more than it should, but overall I liked it. I cared about Ben and his plight, and the supporting characters were the right kind of crazy. Again, maybe it will remind you of a dead-end job you had years ago. Or worse, like me, it will remind you of the dead-end job you currently have. Either way, give it a shot. At least you're not at work, right?
Also not working, ever, are the Yays and Boos. I mean, these two would like to get a job, but they're not even three years old yet.
Yaaaaaaaaaaay!
- Let's get it out of the way: the nudity. Fellas, this movie is ridiculous. It's not necessarily quantity, but oh my is it quality.
- Okay, fine. It's kind of quality too.
- Oh, speaking of nudity, there's a pretty funny scene where Ben sketches a pretty girl in his art class around some naked fat guy. The naked guy keeps farting, which really isn't that funny. But his constant offscreen apologies are.
- There was a little camera trickeration that was super rad. Ben falls into his bed standing up and it's like an infinitely smaller version of Inception. Well, no. But still. It's cool.
- The art of boredom has never been portrayed so well.
- While the matching boners scene may take things a bit too far, I really enjoyed the exploration into how little boys become introduced to the female form. If only my introduction to it had been so cool. the first breasts I saw belonged to my neighbor's grandmother. Seriously.
- There's a pretty solid crush vs. crush argument that I think even my Dad would love.
- Sharon, the most normal of Ben's co-workers, is very pretty. I wish Emilia Fox (pictured above) was in more stuff, as she is really charming, too.
- While the whole soccer interlude is kind of weird, the Karate Guy's first save is pretty hysterical.
- The barman ruled so hard. So did that sketchy stripper. Who oddly enough, looked exactly like Cameron Diaz. If she were a man.
- And finally, the finale. Sharon had seen the wrong second of a two-second story. Perfect.
Boooooo!
- Envy. I really wish I were British. If only so I could say Hi-ya and Whatcha with out sounding like an ass. Well, an arse.
- Oh, and I'd know what the Hell a pickle sandwich is.
- The saying, like an otter's pocket. Seems like a rather way to describe the female...um....thingy.
- Young Ben used to hang out at school on Saturday. Aww. That's kind of sad. And awesome.
- Which also describes his first girlfriend Tania. She's a Yay. Her hairy arm? That's a Boo.
- And finally, I'm going to Boo the fact that it took f--king Mr. Skin for me to have heard ever heard of Cashback when say, both G.I. Joe flicks are readily available? What the shit is that? I mean, that's only marginally worse than finding out about it on some shitty blog, run by some complete pervert.
Actually, speaking to my perversion/obsession, let me tell you this. In a sign of oncoming dementia (or simply adulthood), I hesitated even starting this one. For once, T & A weren't going to be enough for me to slog through another shitty flick. In fact, I wanted to make sure it was decent before I even bothered. So quickly, I hit up IMDb and saw that it had a user rating of 7.3, which is pretty good, all things considered. But just to be safe, I scrolled down to the comments, just to skim the titles. Fourth comment down said this:
too many boobs.
And all it got was a 7.3?