the audience applauded

Good start, but then it gets ruined

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

i should qualify that title, now that i think about it. Checkout is not entirely worthless. i've had the opportunity to see it twice, and on the second time i did get a great laugh at the movie's expense. so i guess it's worth something for that. and also it's worthwhile for the excruciating pain it caused me on my first viewing. as another reviewer pointed out, this film is hackneyed in every sense of the word. not a single original thought went into this movie (which makes the comment below about the originality of the premise entirely baffling to me). the film is nothing but a long line of cliches which are strung together and paraded around as a movie. it is definitely not the next Clerks, it is definitely not original, and it is absolutely not "good, clean fun." the film is absolute agony to the uninitiated (after seeing it a first time, the second time can be quite funny, in an insulting sort of way). as i looked around the theater, it was obvious that nearly everyone, barring perhaps the elderly, were completely bored or pained by this movie. during some of the particularly emotional scenes, like where Nick chews out his mother, the audience was actually cringing because it was so poorly done. i even heard someone *groan* in the theater, something i had heretofore never witnessed. i don't care where you have the chance to see this movie, be it at a film festival, or in a indie theater, or wherever. do yourself a favor, skip this movie with a vengeance. unless you're like me and just can't resist the opportunity to see what may truly be the worst movie ever made.

I recently saw Checkout at The Valley Film Festival and really enjoyed it. Anson Scoville, (as Curt McCain) was great. We should definitely be seeing him in more films. Michael Parducci and Burt Young were also very good. Mark Foggetti did a wonderful job with the cinematography and direction of the film. The story is entertaining and has laugh-out-loud humor. If you can... checkout... Checkout!

Director Mark Foggetti synchronizes cast, characters and plot to produce a light, yet engaging film. Mark has a knack for casting, and in drawing out performances of his actors that strike just the right chord for the material. Checkout is no different. Michael Parducci is especially effective as Nick, who, throughout the story, experiences a full range of emotions from love to lament, anger to forgiveness, exasperation to hope, and pulls them all off convincingly.Yes, there are some sophmoric characters, caricatures and situations, as one reviewer has pointed out, but these are but light-hearted adornments to what is, at its center, a multi-layered love story: the love of a mother and son; the love of two brothers; the love among friends; the love of a man and woman. No one is perfect. No one sells out. No one is unaffected.If good storytelling is about conflict, and it is, then this is a very good story. The good guys win and that's okay.Stay tuned for more good stuff from Mark Foggetti. He's just getting warmed up.

I had the pleasure of seeing this little independent comedy at a recent film festival in Southern California and found it captivating.The two leads are charming, talented and worthy of further exposure in films. In fact, while Burt Young (ROCKY 1-4) was the only familiar face in the cast, I thought the other performers were uniformly good in their roles, which is rare in a low-budget independent film, where often friends and family are pressed into service. Clearly, this was a cast of professionals and they served the film well.The premise was something unique and I always respond to originality when I see it in films. A likeable man-child, still pining for his lost love and looking for his place in the world, starts a dating service in the family-owned supermarket where he works. There are numerous funny sequences involving how people are put together in this highly unusual context. A subplot involving a threat to bulldoze the market for a parking lot, while not as engaging, still works well as a counterpoint to the dating service aspect of the story.Director/cinematographer Mark Foggetti gives a thoroughly pro look to his film. Low budget movies usually look like it, owing to poor production values, underlit scenes and amateur level acting. CHECKOUT has none of these faults and indeed, looks like a studio-produced feature.If you're looking for an evening of light entertainment, you could do much worse than CHECKOUT.