10 Items or Less
A famous actor heads to a small town in California to research his upcoming Indy film, his first in four years, where he will play the Store Manager of a supermarket.
There he meets cashier, Scarlet, from the 10 Items or less lane, and is enamored by her skills. Over the day they discuss life, relationships, careers and what they consider to be part of their own 10 items that are special to them.
Direction
Brad Silberling takes a drastic 180 in some of his earlier filmography that is full of computer imagery (like A series of unfortunate events) to direct this indy film. shot in 15 days. It is a sound effort, that does well with a limited (also Indy) budget.
Cast/Characters
Morgan Freeman plays the ‘fictionalised’ version of himself – as the ‘unnamed’ celebrity who goes to the small town. His filmography is sometimes joked at times having ‘starred in that Ashley Judd’ movie Double Down (since they have previously starred together in two films).
Paz Vega plays Scarlet. She plays the role of Scarlet sweetly at times, and holds her own against megastar Freeman. Her character is both confident in her own skin with her skills at her job, but also shows restrained insecurity with her desire for something more.
Small roles are also held by up and coming stars Jonah Hill and Jim Parsons – who both have comical ‘written for the screen’ roles in bookends of the film; Hill at the start, Parsons near the end. Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman also have a small cameo as themselves towards the end.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
Freeman is solid as the ‘big star disassociated with the world (doesn’t know phone number, day of week, etc).
Freeman and Vega pair well together, and the friendship feels quite organic – even if it was both forced and rushed for the sake of the screenplay. While in reality, I wouldn’t believe that the deep connection they develop would happen.
The timeline of the days events also seem a bit far fetched, with Scarlet meeting ‘Him’, working a full day of work, fighting with her ex, getting a full make over, the car wash scene, a full deep and meaningful over ‘protein’ all happening before 4pm.
A couple of the downs I found was the overuse of the ‘f’ word, just because they could. This would limit the audience to a more mature age, when it really could have been watched by younger audiences without the overuse of it.
I also found some of the dialogue a little too sexist, and all directed at the main female Vega. Even in 2006 this felt a bit off putting.
Overall
Even at 80m I did find this a little bit of a drag to get through, and while I like Freeman as an actor, I felt that this was not one of his stronger performances.
If you are a fan of Independent films, then this might be more to your liking. That being said, there were some funny moments, and the connection between Scarlet and ‘Him’ was nice to see, and it did seem to be more of a ‘father/daughter’ type friendship more than anything.
3/5