Free Samples

Free Samples is an extremely low-budget indie from 2012. It has its moments, but overall I'm left with the notion that the writer, Jim Beggarly, challenged himself to script a film that takes place almost entirely in and around an ice-cream truck, and this is what he came up with.

Directed by Jay Gammill, Free Samples is another in a long line of movies about slacker young people trying to figure out their lives. This time it's Jillian, played by indie stalwart Jess Weixler. She's dropped out of law school, so now is tending bar two nights a week, sleeping around, and drinking a lot. She's on a trial separation with her college boyfriend.

She awakes with a wicked hangover one morning and is asked by her friend to take over operating an ice cream truck, which is testing a product and giving out free samples. She does so reluctantly, but over the course of a day she will meet a lot of people, nice and not so nice, and find out things about her boyfriend which will make her take stock of her life.

The film has some famous faces pop up. Jesse Eisenberg plays a slick literature student (that seems like an oxymoron) who takes a shine to her, and of all people Tippi Hedren as an actress from yesteryear who eats the ice cream even though she doesn't like it just to get out to talk.

Free Samples is no great shakes, but Weixler, who unlike Greta Gerwig has not yet gone mainstream, does a fine job of holding the film down. At times the character is so nasty you can't bear it anymore, but eventually she makes it worth watching.