Manthast
Absolutely amazing
FrogGlace
In other words,this film is a surreal ride.
DipitySkillful
an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Devon Ull
I am retired, I watch movies every day, I collect them and I only stumbled across this gem in 2017. There should be more than just 23 reviews of this wonderful film so I am adding mine. I thought the movie Clerks was brilliant, and I think this movie is similarly brilliant. Similar themes, similar presentation, similar degree of profundity, but Free Samples is much more friendly and the acting is far more charming. And the charm stays with you as you contemplate the possibilities.
dwuksta
Just watching it now, the fact that I'm not waiting for it to finish is probably a give away. I really did feel like I was watching a tasteless impersonation of Winona Ryder, but without any of the skill. It's a boring indie film, the plot is not believable, the main character is a depressing early 20s law school drop out. The incidental characters seem to become the centre of attention for a large percentage of the film, but there's nothing to hold your attention,just ridiculous writing, trying to be clever, misses the mark, I even felt like it was just smart ass lines being spewed out, with each character trying to out do each other. For the people rating it higher than a 2, they are associated with the film, or brain dead.
SnoopyStyle
Jillian (Jess Weixler) has left Stanford law school and her boyfriend for a semester to try something new. Only she's no good at anything other than drinking. After a night of passout drinking, she has to give out free samples of ice cream from a food truck for a friend who is joining an intervention for her brother. She faces people with her acerbic wit and her pounding hangover.I love Jess Weixler's sardonic personality. And it works great especially in the first half with Jason Ritter. They have a fun combative conversation. It's not so much with Jesse Eisenberg. She has more chemistry with Ritter.The last half does stumble a little bit. Tippi Hedren is playing an interesting character but it's just too cliché. And when school friend Paula drops by, it hits that speed bump a little too hard. For that kind of coincidence, it could never maintain any believability.
mark blanchard
This one-set Indy tries very hard to be sharp and mordant and timely. The trouble is that nothing about the characters or their situations rings true. The main set is an ice cream truck located in what looks like a borderline ghetto where the heroine must give away free samples of chocolate and vanilla, nothing else. The workers and everyone in the neighborhood seem to already know that the pseudo ice cream is horrible. So what are they really doing there? In what alternate universe would this actually happen? Apparently in the same universe where a self-absorbed Cali-blonde Stanford law student would be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I say, to learn that 5 years after she left home, her dad moved out and took up with a trophy bimbo. That evidently never happens in alternate universe Z, so of course it sends our heroine into a drunken tailspin where she must engage in contrived sardonic banter with every unlikely walk-on character who ambles by her pseudo ice cream truck. Sadly, none of these encounters feels more forced or contrived than the heroine's confrontation with her unwanted fiancée.After 90 minutes of this I yearned to get back to our universe where Cheech and Chong would have a very good business plan for that ice cream truck working the ghetto and where all their customers' curious demands for "stamps" would make sense.