The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/25332
Vintage Video ‘Cherry 2000,’ Melanie Griffith, David Andrews It’s intriguing, trippy fun to see what filmmakers think the future might look like. Robocops, replicants and disgrun- tled mutants alike will all tell you that these stories inform us at least as much about when they were created as they accurately predict any kind of distant reality. Such is the case with “Cherry 2000,” a 21st century adventure that’s, in fact, totally ’80s (1987, to be pre- cise). it’s not set in the year 2000. The turn of the 21st century is meant almost wist- fully here, referring to a “vintage” model of robot concubine, apparently manu- factured as the Bush vs. Gore votes were being tallied. Cherry (Pamela Gidley) is a Stepford sort of circuited spouse to Sam Treadwell (David Andrews), whose domestic bliss has lasted up until our story begins, circa 2017 or so. Sam treasures his artificially intelligent life partner, who waits for him nightly with dinner and limited streams of small talk prepared. Of course, like the typical human husband, he hasn’t neces- sarily read her instruction manual all too thoroughly, nor does he fully grasp the effect water has on electronics. He gets amorous with Cherry right next to their futuristic, overflowing sink. She short circuits, Y2K-related fears fulfilled at last (if you’re keep- ing score, that’s a decade-old reference about a 20-year old movie _ one so stale it requires two “Hot Tub Time Machine” trips). The mechanical missus is more or less totaled. Treadwell’s attachment to Cherry drives him to a compulsive kind of res- urrection quest. “Cherry 2000” fails to foresee the advent of eBay, and so Sam will have to leave the soulless city he knows for a foolhardy pilgrimage into the surrounding wasteland, where he should be able to find rare parts. One of Cherry’s neatest tricks is that as-nails-ness right away, she executes a judo flip on Sam that’s straight out of a 20th century self-defense class. Melanie’s Johnson (an incredibly awk- services of a savvy tracker named “E. Johnson,” who blows Sam’s brittle mind by being a purty lady (Melanie Griffith). To demonstrate her tough- ward turn of phrase) is a welcome con- trast to the simplistically perky Cherry. At the same time, it’s not as if the studio went out of its way to cast Kathy Bates. She’s also perhaps not quite as credible a sci-fi survivor as dystopian hall of fam- ers Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamil- ton, two of the intimidating standard- bearers when it comes to pioneering, no-nonsense grit in a (predictably) bar- ren, bleak future. But then, that may not be entirely what Griffith was after here. She’s far and away the most positively human presence in the movie. Speculative science fiction can come encrusted with as many cliches as films from any other genre, falling like hybrid border towns between nations on a post-apocalyptic movie map. “Cherry”’s merciless amusement park is no excep- tion _ divided between a “Blade Run- ner” metropolis and a “Thunderdome” desert, its cinematic maraschino has been marinated in equal parts Ridley Scott (courtesy of Philip K. Dick) and George Miller. The premise of “Cherry 2000” hits very nicely upon a particular nerve _ the male chauvinistic inclination towards the invariably agreeable “trophy wife” taken to a high-tech extreme. Sam’s marriage to Cherry is eerily “flawless,” with no marital discord because there’s no hint of it in her pro- gramming. She’s a walking, wired em- bodiment of the assembly-line romantic comedy. “Cherry 2000” is very much a Melanie Griffith vehicle, but it’s Cherry who’s constantly likened to _ and objectified as _ a kind of car. She’s the plausible result of pesky humanity being factored out of the courtship equation. E. Johnson certainly has a singularly insulting gig on her hands _ a hu- man woman having to chase down the man-made “ideal” interpretation of her gender. Male bounty hunters who can’t Feb. 17, 2011 O-Town Scene 19 He’ll need to enlist the relate might envision having to fetch some futuristic Excalibur of a vibrator from an abandoned Antiques Roadshow warehouse. Films set in the (strangely not- too-far-off) future often reveal a deep nostalgia for what they deem to be the enduring “classics,” as evidenced by E. Johnson’s convey- ance of choice: a re- stored Ford Mustang fit for the unforgiv- ingly rough terrain of tomorrow, which she relies on all too heavily. Cherry parts company with more android-friendly pictures (“Blade Runner,” “Aliens,” “Terminator”), in that it doesn’t so much explore the self- questioning alienation and loneliness (i.e. the humanity) that robots often feel _ particularly once they learn they’re robots. Instead, “Cherry 2000” has clearly weighed homosapiens against machines and found the latter lacking. “Cherry 2K”’s satire is less sharp or well-aimed when it cynically seeks to portray sexual politics in its urban setting. Singles meet up (having preemp- tively “lawyered up”) at neon-lit clubs, and more or less square off, as if already at a prelude to a divorce proceeding: they engage in wearying bouts of legalistic haggling. In “Cherry”’s anti-ro- mantic climate, the erotic and the bureaucratic are bound together by bright red tape. Brace yourself for a brief Laurence Fishburne ap- pearance as one of the one-night-stand litigators. You’ll also see catch ’80s sci-fi stalwarts such as Marshal Bell (“Total Recall”) and Brion James (“Blade Run- ner”). _ Sam Benedict Grade: C