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Some of the additional material is welcome since it fleshes out the characters and their relationships. The film's structure is a little awkward, almost certainly as a result of its being expanded from 20 minutes to 97. Aside from taking Ben to a go-go bar and providing him not-so-sage advice about love, his primary purpose is to either get slapped by women or have drinks thrown in his face. Sean Evans fills the best friend role adequately. Michael Dixon, Michael Lambourne, and Stuart Goodwin are on hand primarily for comic relief. Michelle Ryan is shrill, but that's intentional since her character is included to provide the expected romantic complications. As Sharon, Emilia Fox is approachable and, as indicated above, made to look subtly more attractive as the film gets closer to the end credits. Sean Biggerstaff strikes the perfect note as Ben - a little shy and nerdy but with a sense of humor and the soul of an artist.

The scenes when time stops are beautifully staged. Ellis imbues Cashback with a whimsical tone, and there's a hint of magical realism.

She starts out average-looking (not the kind of person to turn heads), then gradually becomes more attractive as the film progresses. Sharon is believable as the kind of woman one might find working in a grocery store late at night. Ben's voiceover narrative is smart and sharp and doesn't merely regurgitate things we can figure out by looking at the images. They're the kinds of people we appreciate spending time with. The key to Cashback's likeability is its characters. Eventually, he learns that the path to emotional healing and a good night's sleep may lie in connecting with Sharon, but things are never easy in a romantic comedy… The act is artistic, not prurient (and is presented as such - there's nothing erotic about these scenes they are ethereal), and Ben's fascination for the female form is explained via flashbacks. While his body goes about mundane tasks, Ben's mind wanders free, freezing time so he can undress and pose female shoppers in order to paint their portraits. There, on the night shift, he is accompanied by pranksters Barry (Michael Dixon) and Matt (Michael Lambourne), manager Jenkins (Stuart Goodwin), and pretty checkout clerk Sharon (Emilia Fox). The emotional trauma has given him insomnia so, to pass the night hours, he decides to work at a grocery store.

In fact, nearly all of Cashback's nudity is from the 2004 version.īen Willis (Sean Biggerstaff) has just undergone a traumatic breakup with his girlfriend, Suzy (Michelle Ryan, soon to be The Bionic Woman). The finished product includes not only the new material but almost the entire short. He brought back the entire cast to film another 80 minutes. Two years later, Ellis elected to take the premise of "Cashback" and develop it into a feature-length endeavor. The film gained some degree of notoriety because of its "extreme" nudity - full-frontal shots of women posed in grocery store aisles while frozen in time. In 2004, Ellis made an Oscar-nominated short called "Cashback" about the lives of grocery store workers. Cashback isn't daring or ambitious but, despite its uneven tone and occasional tendencies to meander, it is endearing. Along the way, women get naked, couples fall in love, and teams lose pickup soccer games 26-to-nothing. For his feature debut, Sean Ellis has crafted a delightful romantic comedy that provides insight into the heart of a painter and the minds of those trapped working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour supermarket. The way Cashback gently plays with reality tickles the memory with distant echoes of Big Fish and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.