10 Items Or Less Movie Review

It's not going to ruin anything to tell you that nothing happens in 10 Items or Less. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of movies. A couple of characters (only one of whom even has a name) spend a day together, doing menial tasks, and getting to know one another. Night falls. The movie is over. That's what we have here. And, for the most part, it works.

The nameless man is Morgan Freeman, playing a Hollywood actor who's researching a role as a lower-class service worker, so he's spending copious amounts of time in the barrio in L.A. At a rundown supermarket he encounters Scarlet (Paz Vega), who agrees to let him tag along with her on a day of mindless errands and fast food. They eat at Arby's, get the car washed, and watch an in-store demo of a "magic" towel at Target. (Freeman's expression when free mops are offered to the crowd is priceless.)

Scarlet and "Him" have nothing in common, and that's entirely the plot line of 10 Items or Less. A good example of what goes on in the movie: He wears $100 t-shirts and can't believe "designer" shirts are only eight dollars at Target. Do even mega stars not know what Target is? I mean, I know celebrities can be out of touch with the world, but the movie takes things a little too far.

I guess without some manufactured conflict and overblown cultural differences, there wouldn't have been much of a movie here, and frankly, even with them, there still isn't much of one. Obviously a pet project from director Brad Silberling (whose odd oeuvre ranges from Moonlight Mile to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), it's easy to see why the story fascinated him... but equally easy to see why it was pretty much a no-show at the box office. There are lots of quiet and fascinating moments between these two as they attempt to communicate across some monster cultural boundaries, but it hardly makes for gripping cinema. The premise wears thin before we're halfway through -- and the movie runs a mere 70 minutes before the credits start to roll.

Freeman and Vega are both charming, the dialogue is charming, and the locations and camerawork are all charming. It's a sweet little date movie, filled with tiny moments (like Kumar Pallana as a zoned-out supermarket manager) that are instantly amusing, then immediately forgotten when the movie's over.

The DVD includes a making-of documentary, deleted scenes, commentary track, Q&A, and other bonus features.

That's one item too many.