MOVIE REVIEW: THE FREEBIE (2010)

Darren (Dax Shepard) and Annie (Katie Aselton) are a couple of young married and very in love people. Darren one day, in the spirit of exploratory conversation, brings up the idea of them both going out and having a free night to themselves where they can go and sleep with one other person for that one night without any consequences.

This movie is one of those very intimate indie dramas where the characters aren’t trying to tell you anything more than something which has happened to them. They’re not trying to be any cliché kind of character that you’ve seen from the classics but rather to be a modern everyday couple that you would meet and would probably call your best friends.

It’s the first film directed by Katie Aselton – wife to indie director Mark Duplass – and she’s decided to tell this story about how this one simple thought comes between these two people who are very in love.

From start to finish the entire film feels like it’s stylistically the same movie as The Puffy Chair – the first feature film directed by Mark & Jay Duplass. It’s as if Aselton came up with the simplest concept of who these people were and allowed her and Shepard to fill in their own personalities and just sat in front of the camera and eventually edited a narrative out of the footage.

Even though it sounds like I’m being harsh on the movie the truth of the matter is that Aselton actually succeeded with her experiment. Shepard and her come off as the most likeable couple you’d ever meet and their performance is so believable that you never think that they’re not these two people but that comes due to the fact that they’re basically playing a version of themselves where they’re actually married. Even though the idea sounds hokey it works and allows you as the viewer to be drawn into the reality and to actually wonder why these two  people would ever want to make this horrible decision.

What I really like about the movie is how it handles the timeline. We’re constantly jumping between the evening where Darren and Annie are in bed having this asinine conversation and the day after they’ve actually had their evening of fun. We see the good intentions and hopes for what this evening will mean for them as a couple and then we see the reactions from the two of them trying to get over this horrible thing.

In the end, like many of the Duplass’ films, it’s completely adequate in succeeding in its goals, but at the same time when all is said and done I didn’t feel like getting up on my soap box to publicly fellate the film. It has moments which feels elegant and things to champion but at no time did I feel the movie would ever be one of my favourites of the past year.

IMDB says 5.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 56%

I say 7.0/10

Andrew Robinson

This is my blog. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My blog is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my blog is useless. Without my blog, I am useless. I must fire my blog true. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my blog and myself are defenders of my mind, we are the masters of our enemy, we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.