Cashback: Critic Reviews

Cashback aspires to be equal parts Volkswagen ad and Nicholson Baker's The Fermata, yet compares unfavorably to both.

Beware films with protagonists depicted as vastly more sensitive than their fellow characters. The result may be a crock like Cashback.

Cashback springs from that childhood fantasy of being able to stop time and wander freely among the temporarily frozen. If only writer-director Sean Ellis had done more than use the conceit for a functional romance.

Wong Kar-wai on aisle 4 and Michel Gondry on aisle 6, with Kevin Smith as mop jockey at all points in between -- such is the lost-in-the-supermarket milieu of writer-director Sean Ellis's whimsical comedy.

It's no small trick to blend fantasy, slapstick and genuine emotion, but [director] Ellis pulls it off with whimsy to spare.

The movie is lightweight, as it should be. It doesn't get all supercharged. Ben and Sharon, despite setbacks, are delighted to be admired by such wonderful partners, and we are happy for them.

[Director] Ellis has rounded up all the actors for this feature adaptation but doesn't add much to the 18-minute original besides a tedious boy-meets-girl.

A sleek little meditation on beauty, desire, love and time. Now and then, it's fairly sophisticated stuff.

It's awkwardly drawn out to feature length with not-truly-comic secondary characters on the supermarket team, and go-nowhere incidents like a soccer match with a rival store and an unresolved encounter with another time-stopper.

Slickly charming, genteelly erotic and directed with supreme polish.

Imagine Kevin Smith with a background in poetry and painting instead of comic books and bestiality jokes, and you'll have an idea of what to expect from an exciting new filmmaker named Sean Ellis, whose terrific debut is called Cashback.

The feature version of a 2004 award-winning British short depicts a sensitive art student who manages to freeze time, allowing him to undress women at his Sainsbury's supermarket and sketch them nude.

Cashback is light, smart, and enjoyable, and it makes me eager to see what Ellis has planned for his next outing.

A flair for language both cinematic and verbal elevates an ordinary coming-of-age comedy of little substance.

A very romantic portrait of a young artist as he ponders love, beauty and living in the moment.

A little too mopey and sexist for its own good. But the cast is engaging enough to keep us interested

I think this filmmaker has a future.

A good writer starts with characters and plot and allows the themes to come naturally from the story. Sean Ellis' script for Cashback is all theme, and it's not that interesting a one to begin with.

The first thing one will probably respond to, after the brief rampant nudity, is the exquisite cinematography by Angus Hudson.

Ellis seems to believe that artists have an enlightened sense of beauty and greater access to it than common folk. And he may be right: He's clearly mastered the skill of convincing art-school chicks to take their clothes off.

...focuses on a pervert who thinks he's a romantic. The more sincere this guy gets about his leering, the more he creeps you out.