There have been many dystopian movies released over the years, with Mad Max rip-offs being a genre all unto themselves, but in 1987 Orion Pictures released a rather odd little entry in this post-apocalyptic wasteland of cinema in the form of Cherry 2000, a film that brought a little more sex and a lot less action than what fans of the time were probably expecting.
Part of the charm and fun in watching speculative science fiction is when the futuristic time period the film takes place in has since been passed, still know moonbase or trips to Jupiter despite Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's assurances, and we are left asking such questions as “Where’s my flying car?” and that is certainly the case with Steve De Jarnatt’s Cherry 2000, which takes place in far off year of 2017. Now, even though this film does have your standard post-apocalyptic wasteland it’s not all biker gangs and assless chaps as there are still city centers where people live relatively normal lives but society has truly fallen on hard times in the area of intimacy as actual sex acts among men and women has become overly litigious and to combat this some men have turned to androids to fulfill their emotional and sexual needs. Enter Sam Treadwell (David Andrews), an employee of the ever-growing recycling industry, whose Cherry 2000 model (Pamela Gidley) has short-circuited during sex on a wet kitchen floor.
He’s just lucky he didn’t get electrocuted in the process.
Distraught over his malfunctioning sex bot, Sam goes to a local robot repairman who tells him that she is damaged beyond repair but her valuable memory disk, which contains her entire personality, is intact and can be used in a new body if he can but find the same model, thus his Robo-girlfriend can be restored. Unfortunately, the Cherry 2000 model is no longer produced and the only remaining ones are to be found in a defunct warehouse in "Zone 7" which is in a particularly dangerous and lawless area that is ruled over by a rather deranged overlord named Lester (Tim Thomerson) and the only chance Sam has of accomplishing such a journey is in the hiring of ace tracker Edith "E" Johnson (Melanie Griffith) to get him in and out of the wasteland.
Did you ever notice that Las Vegas never survives the post-apocalypse in these types of movies?
What follows is your typical adventure buddy film where the two leads will start out in a rather antagonist fashion, bickering and pointing out each other's faults, but over time they will grow to appreciate each other, and with this being a male/female dynamic this will of course lead to romance and end with our two heroes heading off into the sunset together. This does happen but not before having some heartfelt moments with E. Johnson’s mentor Six-Fingered Jake (Ben Johnson), whose job is to give wise advice to idiot Sam, who really needs it, but where the film fails in plotting and originality is more than made up for by its crazy cast of oddball characters, with Tim Thomerson stealing the show as this bizarre wasteland overlord whose nutty minions live in a sort of post-apocalyptic Club Med, who when they aren’t murdering intruders they are throwing barbeques and dancing the Hokey Pokey. It’s all so delightfully goofy that you start to wish the movie centred around them and not Sam and his stupid sex robot quest.
I certainly can’t picture Lord Humongous living in a place like this.
Stray Observations:
• That a sex robot can be damaged due to sexual activity on a wet kitchen floor, resulting in a complete core meltdown, seems like a pretty big defect. I guess jacuzzi sex would be completely out of the question.
• Apparently, in the future recycling will become such a lucrative industry that the average employee will be expected to wear a three-piece suit.
• To pick up a woman at a bar you are expected to bring a demo reel of previous sexual performances, or as we would call it today OnlyFans.
• In the future you will need an agreed-upon contract, arbitrated by a third party, for something as basic as a one-night stand. That this hasn’t actually come to pass yet is quite surprising.
• Our heroes getting across a canyon river involves them letting their car get caught by a magnet on a crane, which leaves them dangling in the air where they will then survive multiple rocket launcher attacks before the shooting of the crane operator in such a way that when he dies he will slump forward on the lever that will move the crane to where they need to go. It’s at this point that any sane person’s bullshit meter would have exploded and have written off this movie as a failure to even be remotely believable, even by cheesy B-movie standards.
• Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet and Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still can be seen in the robot repairman's shop just to remind us that there are good robot movies out there.
Question: Were Robby and Gort turned into sex workers?
It goes without saying that Sam Treadwell will learn that “There's a lot more to love than hot wiring” and thus he will find himself attracted to the scruffy badass that is E. Johnson and the two of them will eventually drive off into the aforementioned sunset together, but not before we get a massive gunfight and a cool car chase or two because that’s what this film was selling to its audience, but where the film fails was in the male protagonist, who is simply too bland and uninteresting when compared to even the most minor character in this movie. Lucky for us, the film does make up for his lack by including a plethora of fun side characters, aside from the brilliant Tim Thomerson, as Lester the wasteland overlord, we also have Cameron Milzer as his goofy wife, who seems more interested in sandwiches than in gunfights and is a pure delight in every scene she’s in, then there is Maniac Cop’s Robert Zdar as one of Lester’s oddball flunkie, and we also have Blade Runner’s Brion James as an outland thug, and even Laurence Fishburne’s blink and you miss his part as a nightclub sex lawyer is more compelling than our supposed hero, add to all that is the fact that we have Melanie Griffith on the cusp of her stardom, she’ll star in Working Girl a year later. That is a lot of great talent assembled for a relatively silly B-movie which is then completely hobbled by a bland lead actor and I can only imagine what this film could have been if they’d cast someone like Bruce Campbell in the lead.
Dude, just get your robot-loving hands off her.
I’m not sure what kind of film Steve De Jarnatt and company were trying to pull off here as it’s more a hodge-podge of science fiction tropes than it is a well-crafted story, that the hero chooses a flesh and blood woman over a robot doesn’t really bring much conflict to the table, and we also don’t even find out what events led to the world being this way. Was it simply economic collapse or something dyer that turned the United States into a blend of Road Warrior and Blade Runner? The filmmakers seemed more interested in the goofy antics of their collection of oddball characters than it was in world-building, and to be fair, for the most part, this does kind of work – as mentioned Tim Thomerson and his renegades are the highlights of the film – and if you let slide the whole absurd “Man goes on a perilous journey to get a sex robot” aspect of the movie you may find yourself having a good time. Overall, Cherry 2000 has some cool production designs and its cast, lead actor aside, all work towards making this a rather fun and entertaining sci-fi flick.
Note: There are a lot of far-fetched ideas I'm willing to accept when I sit down to watch a science fiction movie but Melanie Griffith's character going through all this shit for a measly $500 dollars was beyond the pale stupid.
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