mattkratz An aspiring rock musician is severely chided by his girlfriend for being a slacker at his "art." He also manages a local bar that serves nothing but cereal-his idea entirely-and attracts a loyal clientele. When a businessman rips off his idea and opens up a new, larger, and fancier store across the street, an all-out war begins. The girlfriend at first considers joining the original Flakes but then joins the competitor. Things then get rather heated as-well, remember Cheers and Gary's bar? This could be shown in college business classes as how businesses and competitions are run. I thought it was a good movie and had a good cast. It was funny and delightful from start to finish. It was a good way to pass an hour and a half.*** out of ****

mcwarryah Having somehow sat through this movie, the one good thing I can say about it is "well, at least the concept is original". The rest of it, though? Utter garbage.The film is horribly acted, the characters mumble and groan their lines in disinterested fashion, and Zooey Deschanel attacks her role as Miss Pussy Katz with the same dull, wooden lifelessness that she always does. How she is thought of as a good actress by anyone is beyond me.The writing is poor, and it tries way too hard to appeal to your typical hipster demographic, though the fact that it somehow manages to have more painfully faux-indie dialog than Diablo Cody's "Juno" is an accomplishment in and of itself. The two main characters are also absurdly named, reinforcing the whole notion that the movie is simply trying too hard. Calling characters "Neal Downs" and "Miss Pussy Katz" is beyond silly, and feels like it's been done sheerly in an attempt to be quirky.The message of "Capitalism is bad!" gets shoved down your throat from the start - Deschanel even quips that "you can't nurture your soul while sitting atop a pile of money" - and by the end, you're praying for this garbage to end, which it does, in the cheesiest, most predictable way possible, a shame, since you'd think a movie with an original concept might have an original ending.The "comedy" is virtually non-existent, and not once during the movie did I laugh, nor did I even spot many attempts at making a joke. May I just don't "get" it because I'm not cool enough.A dull, lifeless, 85 minutes (or thereabouts) that feels like twice that. Avoid it.

shortmantall The best compliment you can give to flakes is that you'll want to work there and believe me I did. The place looked fun and full of life. This film has a similar premise to Empire Records and in some ways I prefer this one as I found it quirkier and more indie. I love Indie films because they function in a way that is all their own. I don't mean that every single indie film functions in the same way, what I mean is one indie film is different from another. Much like Empire Records the subject (the shop in question) just looks like a fun place to work. As for the film, it was really clever, fun, warm, idiosyncratic and very much enjoyable from start to finish. Aaron Sanford shows he can act and of course Zooey Deschanel, picture perfect as always. The most impressive thing you can say about these two in both the writing and performance is they went beyond the chemistry of these two characters and took it to another place by having them have a dynamic. It was there in the writing and in the performances. Simply having the couple not let the work dynamic get in the way of their personal life and in a way does in simple subtle ways is a joy to watch and what I mean. The rest of the cast do fantastically well as well. It's nice to see Christopher Lloyd too.The other aspect of the film I loved was the set design and soundtrack which brought it to life. On the whole this was a superb film with heart and soul and brains to match.

toddbrandel Checked out this movie OnDemand last night on a lark - my girlfriend and I read the description and decided to give it a shot. I wish I could get my six bucks back. It was the kind of movie that looked like it was written and directed by a 14-year-old trying really, really hard to be "indie." I was shocked that Zooey Deschanel and Christopher Lloyd allowed themselves to be associated with this awful excuse for a film.The dialog was cliché at best, the acting was miserable, and the entire premise of the movie was ridiculous. How can you eat vintage cereal? I know the stuff is loaded with preservatives, but I'm pretty sure you can't open a box of cereal from the 70s and eat it.After about 45 minutes of watching this trainwreck of a movie, we decided we couldn't take it anymore and turned it off. The only advantage of watching Flakes was that it made the Arrested Development episodes we watched immediately afterward look like the most genius pieces of entertainment ever crafted.