Cashback

This 2007 first feature from young Brit director Sean Ellis certainly has visual flair and a promising premise. What if you could stop time? Well, if you were a 14 year old boy, you'd look at a lot of titties. Alas, the protagonist of Cashback is not a 14 year old boy anymore, but a heart-broken art student with insomnia who works the nightshift at a supermarket whose main clientele are beautiful white women. Annoyingly, instead of just admitting that he wants to look at a lot of titties, he waxes poetic about the beauty of the female form, art, etc. etc. etc. in ways that show he is more sensitive and artistic than everyone else. In one of the many "aren't I profound" monologues, he wonders whether the girls would forgive him if they knew he has been stopping time and taking off their clothes to draw them... he likes to think they would because of his "artistic motivations" but I would say he was just a jackass. What to do when the narrator and protagonist is a jackass and an annoying little self-important prig? What to do when the director throws in a slapstick, unrelated soccer game in the middle of a saggy and boring plot? Stop watching. That's just what we did.