Cherry 2000.

I chose Cherry 2000 as my next holiday movie to watch and review mainly because it connects spiritually to the last two movies I watched, Westworld (in themes) and Trancers (since they both star the fantastic Tim Thomerson). I didn’t review Trancers mainly because the only real problem it had were some clunky fight scenes and some real lacking exposition, I full heartedly recommend you go track down the first three movies in the series, just don’t bother with four or five. With the usual introduction out of the way, let’s get on with it, enjoy!

Now let me just say this. The writing SUCKS, the acting SUCKS (except Thomerson) and the special effects SUCK. But it was saved totally and utterly by its characters, not just made bearable but made into a great film. Okay, not a brilliant one, but a great one nonetheless. 

I mean any film that can make me fell smitten with Melanie Griffith (who these days looks like a piece of gone off fruit) deserves to go down in history. 

Okay basically the main plot goes a little like this:

One evening a guy called Sam (pretty much the only shit character in the entire film, but I can’t help but feel his general blandness was deliberate) is about to make love to his sexbot (model Cherry 2000 [played by the-gorgeous-but-not-as-sexy-as-Griffith, Pamela Gidley]) when she malfunctions because she leaves the tap on and she gets wet (is this a pun, guys?). 

Cherry 2000 is an old model, so fixing her or getting a new one is impossible unless you seek the help of a Tracker. (A Tracker is basically Mad Max who finds Sexrobots for people [I don’t know, they don’t really go into much detail about the profession but I’m not really sure they need too, it pretty much makes sense in the internal continuity]). So Sam gets the help of E (Griffith), E is a sexy, cool, badass redhead who can’t act for shit. They go on a quest and battle the evil (and downright awesome) Lester (Thomerson). 

As Sam goes on his quest he slowly falls in love with E (as did I) and eventually the whole quest (so basically the whole fucking film) becomes pointless because Sam realises that Cherry is just a robot and can’t compete with the real thing, (Griffith) so he leaves Cherry behind and flies away with E. 

Some really important character dies along the way, but they just kinda go ‘oh’ and leave it at that. Hence me just tacking that bit of info on the end. Yeah basically the whole narrative is totally stupid and should probably be ignored, like that kid who drools in the corner, you wanna look, you wanna marvel at the oddness, but know it is rude to stare. 

Before it gets to the whole Tracker bit of the film, honestly I thought I was watching a porno. It had all the setup of a scifi spoof porn, except just when the porn is meant to start, it suddenly turns into a cowboy movie. All the while trying to be ‘quirky’ by putting people in rainmacs with tin foil on their heads and calling towns things like ‘Glory Hole’. REALLY FUNNY GUYS. Luckily this is about the point where E comes in and manages to distract you from all the shit special effects and annoying hipster bullshit. I am a little sadend we only got to see her naked boobs as a shadow and not the real thing, she’s got topless in movies before, so why not here? I LOVE YOU E! 

Also, it has to be said, Cherry is easily one of the best written robots, ever. You know all the times NPC’s completely break the immersion of a videogame by saying the same thing over and over again and not reacting to their environments? Yeah, Cherry is written like that. She has a preset few phrases which she says (with limited variation) and although she reacts to her surroundings somewhat, she always feels scripted and never seems self aware, it’s brilliant. 

So do I recommend this movie? Yes! I never thought I’d say it and I never really wanted to say it, but Griffith makes all the terrible action sequences and general shittyness worth it. I love how this movie reminds us of how sexy she used to be, much like Trancers did with Helen Hunt. Throw in Thomerson being well…himself…and also playing an awesome eccentric villain, then mix in tons of fantastic supporting characters and one of the best written robots ever and you have yourself a great movie (and a fantastic recipe). I mean it’s no masterpiece, its attempts to be ‘artistic’ and ‘alternative’ are about as distracting as some guy waving his dick in your face throughout the films running time but it’s a better use of an hour and half than Milk Money was (shudder).

Think About It!

-Locke.