10 Items or Less

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10 Items or Less

57% Liked It
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10 Items or Less

Morgan Freeman, Paz Vega, Jonah Hill, Anne Dudek, Alexandra Berardi

Once the center of Hollywood, an aging actor finds that his fear of failure has made his career dry up, and he's now forced to consider a role in a small independent movie. While researching for the r...( read more  read more... )ole, he stumbles into Scarlet, a spitfire check-out clerk at a Latino community market. Soon abandoned by his driver, the world famous actor must rely on Scarlet to lead him back to his side of the tracks. This trek through Los Angeles features richly unexpected situations, chance encounters, and personal revelation that neither character could ever have anticipated.

Id: 10842283

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10 Items or Less Recent Reviews
  • evillincoln
    June 19, 2009
    evillincoln
    this is not a real movie, its just Morgan Freeman messing around
  • Redlats
    June 5, 2009
    Redlats
    I only watched it for half the movie. I found it boring. I like both Paz Vega and Morgan Freeman, but I found the content lacking. It is pretty bad when the best part of the movie is Morgan Freeman walking lock-step with the store manager.
  • JDFortuneFan
    May 23, 2009
    JDFortuneFan
    A quirky, non-Hollywood film which is engaging because Morgan Freeman is such a charmer. This film is very different and probably will not be liked by the majority. In most respects, it is a pointless film, yet the interaction between Freeman and Paz Vega is priceless.
  • EarthlyAlien
    November 8, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    "The director is so young he hasn't even been born yet."

    Actors playing themselves or, at least, versions of their personas is always an interesting experiment. Usually it's a way to playfully mock their public image and nothing more, unless you're M. Night Shyamalan who ...( read more)actually plays an actor playing a part who is pretty much his God-like image of himself. Albert Brooks is always Brooks-ish but always keeps his name. William Shatner was the object of two Star Trek fans platonic hang-out fantasy. Now it's Morgan Freeman's turn, an actor who doesn't really have much of a public persona other than being just a seriously great actor. That fact helps making Brad Silberling's interesting social experiment such a charmer in the truest sense of the term by getting to watch Freeman break out, be a little goofy and have a lot of fun alongside one of the most beautiful and exciting actresses working today.

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    An actor who looks and sounds just like Morgan Freeman is being driven out to a little supermarket in California to research a role he "hasn't committed to" yet. He hasn't worked in four years and is constantly hounded by the driver connected to the film ( Jonah Hill, funny as always) to delight him with the familiar pipes which have become almost as synonymous with voice-overs as James Earl Jones. He even mistakes his voice for that on an audio-book. The store itself is a large hole on the Earth, with just a couple cashiers on duty and a manager (the legend Kumar Pallana) barely left with a single faculty.

    The unnamed actor checks out the place but finds himself, as anyone would, drawn to the woman handling the 10-items-or-less line. Her name is Scarlet (Paz Vega) and she takes her position most seriously even if she hates it. After a full shift, where the actor tries to have as much fun trapped within a discount outlet since Frank Whaley in Career Opportunities, he's left stranded and turns to Scarlet who agrees to get him home after she completes all her errands for the day. One of them just happens to be a job interview for a secretarial job and the actor jumps at the chance to repay her by preparing her through the motions of a true Film star.

    The superficial notion of a rich, Hollywood celebrity helping a barely middle class minority should be struck from your mind instantly as there's not an ounce of condescension dripping from its intentions. At first, the parody of Freeman's image and career, including the video boxes with Ashley Judd (for a made-up thriller) haunting his every move, is pure comedic bliss. Watching him discover the joys of sock-shopping at Target or assisting the workers at a car wash are wonderful bits of self-mockery, celebrity overindulgence and comic zeal I can't ever remember Freeman being given the opportunity to digest.

    Silberling's screenplay though, contains some beautiful exchanges between the pair that strip down the fantasy of the situation and becomes just two non-labelled people with real conversation to share. Their instructions to name ten things or less they couldn't live without have the flair of a James L. Brooks or Cameron Crowe and help us relate to them as more than just a gimmick.

    Paz Vega, who absolutely lit up the screen in her American debut (Brooks' Spanglish), conveys both the spunk and the weariness of someone just trying to get through each day without screaming. Thankfully, Silberling doesn't fall into the trap of dressing her down, substituting mousiness as the metaphor for breaking through. She's beautiful, but a real beauty unmanufactured. Vega and Silberling create Scarlet as a whole; a doer not about to cry "poor me" for the cards she's been dealt or to succumb to some cheap romance to solve all her problems.

    10 Items or Less may be Silberling's look at the way that celebrities and the public support each other. One does their job to provide pleasures to millions while their fans look up to them and try to follow their lead whether it be in fashion or whatever inspiration they find in their work. Its presentation is lightweight but in a good way. This is no vanity project for Freeman or some excuse to temporarily escape studio tent poles (where Silberling himself has flourished with Casper and Lemony Snicket's).

    There's a genuineness to the film from front-to-back, headlined by the authenticity of Freeman and Vega's performances which carry a breezy, improv-like momentum while never succumbing to making the story all about them. In under 75 minutes, there may be just enough to fill a list of ten things you enjoy about the film, but you will be tempted to go to eleven if you consider the delight itself of watching Paz Vega on screen. Quite a charming film.
  • wellmeetagain
    August 22, 2008
    wellmeetagain
    10 words or less review: Morgan Freeman fan's will say, he's a keeper.
  • theloneowl
    November 15, 2009
    theloneowl
    Un filmettino adorabile in cui Morgan Freeman fa Morgan Freeman.
    Peccato per il finale, che pretendevo diverso ç_ç
  • fluturash
    October 2, 2009
    fluturash
    it wasn't a bad movie, i just wasn't impressed. a good story nice actors, a bit boring here and there.
  • jasonvargo
    September 29, 2009
    jasonvargo
    The first film in history to be released via internet download while playing in theaters, 10 Items or Less strives for an indie-quirk attitude, yet loses it within the first twenty minutes of the production. For the next hour, it is a rumination on the differences between the wor...( read more)king and upper classes. It's too bad the interplay Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega display in the grocery store early on is moved outside that establishment later in the film; the down and out market is a wondrous place filled with rich possibilities for dark humor.

    And there's the problem: this movie is billed as a comedy when it really isn't. Sure, watching Freeman as an out of work actor watch Vega's Scarlet go about her rudimentary cashier job doesn't sound funny, though it is his wide eyed disbelief over her menial tasks which makes the sequence a pleasure to watch. (Not to mention director Silberling allows the actors to act in unbroken takes throughout the film.) An entire film could have been made inside the market, centering on the people there and Freeman's reactions to each of them. Truthfully, that's where the movie should have been set, not in car washes and interviews, trailer parks or car hoods.

    However, the finished product is what we're given. 10 Items or Less turns into each of them teaching the other something important about life. Scarlet, stuck in a dead in job with a dead end husband, brings Freeman back to earth, walking him through a world he has never known. For his part, Freeman is happy go lucky, without a seeming care in the world...a lesson he imparts on Scarlet. She is perpetually negative, finding reasons not to do the things she should be doing. Take a job interview. The pair go into Target-a wonder for Freeman-where he "puts her together," casting her in the role of an office manager. He's soft and delicate with his young ward, pushing her to think of herself in a positive light. But it's dreadfully boring.

    Freeman and Vega develop an easy rapport in 82 minutes, inhabiting both their characters fully. Considering they are are the leads and only actors with any appreciable screen time, the relative success of the production rests squarely on them. Silberling's direction is functional, considering the film was shot in 15 days on a "nothing" budget. His greatest achievement is knowing when to allow the scene to continue uninterrupted, making this truly an actors film. Despite the acting and directing, it's the script which lets us down in the end. Too indie, too high minded, too art house.
  • casagrande
    September 25, 2009
    casagrande
    O título em português é o pior possível, mas a ideia do filme é muito interessante. Apesar do enredo ser um pouco confuso.
  • FunctioningOnImpatience
    September 23, 2009
    FunctioningOnImpatience
    Pretty entertaining movie, but then again, anything with Morgan Freeman is pretty good
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