"Cashback" is an 18-minute short film from over 10 years ago. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the live action short category, but lost to the brilliant "Six Shooter". At least this time, the Academy got it right. Still, writer and director Sean Ellis managed to build a fairly successful filmmaking career on the basis of that achievement. However, I really see nothing memorable at all about "Cashback". The first half is basically about a young man's professional life at a supermarket, his grubby boss, his likable female colleague and two other colleagues who like joking around and playing pranks and also get in trouble with their boss occasionally. The second half then is about the young man's childhood when he saw a Swedish foreign exchange student fully naked at his house and how this inspired him also to see the customers at the supermarket naked now. Or does he really have the ability to stop time and see right through all their clothes. I have to say, this part was really not well-done at all. It always had a touch of softcore to me and I saw almost no artistry in there despite Ellis' try-hard attempts in making this look like something significant. You can include full-frontal nudity, but you have to spin a convincing story around it and succeed in depicting and explaining why you do so. This movie came short in that regard. But I am not surprised the Academy nominated it. They are far more liberal these days, so they had no problem with the nudity and they love to prove people wrong who say they are too uptight for films like this one. Literally, this is the only reason I can think of why this got an Academy Award nomination. It sure can't be because of the mediocre quality of this short movie. The only thing I kinda liked here was the music, but that was also only because Ellis took famous pieces by other artists and included them here. Not recommended.
Review of Cashback
