The Freebie

So, I'm not sure why I ended up seeing this but something caught my interest. It's this little indie comedy film abobut a seemingly perfect married couple, played by Dax Shepherd and writer/director Katie Aselton, who decided to give each other a night off to sleep with whomever they wish in order to solidify their relationship. It was also filmed on location in Los Angeles. The film turned out to be like a Greta Gerwig movie but with an actual plot-line and extremeley attractive leads.

The movie is basically an ad-lib-athon, some people call this 'mumblecore' I believe. Most of the dialogue was relevant to the movie and helped to build the main characters' relationship. The was an actual story arc and the characters were interesting. I assume that this is like the movie Hall Pass (since I haven't seen it) but realistic. The characters were believable, although too good-looking.

The cinematography and sound editing were obviously minimal as it usually employed in these types of movies where natural sound is favored over fine tuned editing. I'm not a huge fan of this type of editing, but it does make the subject matter feel more real. When there's a lack of sound editing, color correction, smooth edit cuts etc it makes the characters feel more real. If the storyline keeps you interested, I believe this approach can help you connect with the characters. When the story (or lackthereof) doesn't keep you interested, this approach becomes annoying - at least that's my opinion. Case in point, Hannah Takes the Stairs. I'm not a fan. Sorry, but I just don't get it. So to sum up all of this rambling, the minimalistic approach to the cinematography and editing can help in some cases and deter in others. In this case, it helped. Although I should note that the sound editing wasn't as raw as I've seen in other low budget indies similar to this.

The actors did a great job coming off as a natural couple. They had some decent chemistry going on. They moved the plot along somehow with little sprinkles of essential dialogue mixed in with the ad-libbing going on.

In the end, it wasn't the low budge romcom I was expecting. It was a tad bit deeper and more thoughtful. Still a little bit stretched given the premis of the movie. I found it interesting to see the locations in L.A. that they filmed at which held the same level of interest as the story did for me. "I trust us, baby"