Cherry - Wanna Play?

18 year old Angelina (Ashley Grace) sells naked pictures of herself to raise money to run away to San Francisco with her best friend Andrew (Dev Patel). She comes from a dysfunctional family and he's secretly in love with her. She gets involved with drug-addicted lawyer Frances (James Franco). Lesbian former porn actress Margaret (Heather Graham) recruits her to be in her film.

Ashley Hinshaw is a fashion model, and she has the acting skills to prove it. Overall the movie had no joy, no pace, no tension, no drama. There is one good scene with Dev Patel, but that's not enough to recommend this film.

The eighteen year-old Angeline (Ashley Hinshaw) raises money with a session of naked pictures and leaves her alcoholic and dysfunctional parents fleeing to San Francisco with her friend Andrew (Dev Patel). They rent a room in the apartment of the gay Paco (Vincent Palo) and Angeline finds a job in a strip club and Andrew in a bookstore. Soon Angeline has a love affair with the drug-addicted lawyer Frances (James Franco) and joins the adult industry making porn. Meanwhile the lesbian director Margaret (Heather Graham) becomes obsessed on her.

"About Cherry" is a movie with a pointless story of a shallow teenager without moral principles that leaves her alcoholic parents to become a porn-star. The characters are poorly developed and most of them are unlikable. Angeline is actually a bisexual teenager without any moral principle and maybe nymphomaniac. The situations are also shallow and the movie is neither a drama or romance nor a soft-porn. The only thing that worths is the beauty of the lead actress. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Doce Tentação"

I just watched this movie. The thing about it is that the characters are very shallow. The acting is good but the characters lack depth and you don't understand why things happen.

Most of the characters appear briefly and we never get to know what happens at the end. Cherry/Angelina's cocaine-addict boyfriend suddenly disappears and we never hear from him again. She argues with her best friend and we don't know what happens to him at the end. The same with her mom's abusive boyfriend and Heather Graham's girlfriend. It's like things happen for no reason. Thing just ... happen. Characters have no impact on the plot. They just come and go. The end is absolutely rubbish.

It's a good movie if you are so bored and wanna kill some time but don't have high expectations.

I would rate it 2 out of 10 but I gave 4 because acting wasn't that bad.

This movie had potential, but squandered it. The story of how a normal, average woman ends up in the porn industry had a lot going for it. It started well enough and seemed to be building to something profound. Instead, from a point it just drifts, and ends up going nowhere. At times it seems judgmental, then next moment titillating. Instead of objectivity the writer and director try to hedge their bets.

On the plus side, Ashley Hinshaw is great in the lead role. Stunningly beautiful, and convincing. James Franco proves yet again that he is vastly overrated as an actor, coming across as a clueless kid in a school play. He is may well be the male version of Kristen Stewart...

Heather Graham does well in a supporting role. Dev Patel seems a bit miscast in his role.

This is a movie that is trying to pick a more realistic approach with its drama and characters, with as a problem though that neither the drama or characters feel involving or realistic in any way.

I'm still a bit confused where the movie thought it was supposed to get its drama from. The premise of the movie does indeed let it sound like a heavy drama, in which an innocent young girl gets stuck into the world of drugs and porn but the problem with the movie is that none of the drama feels desperate in anyway. I don't even know why the girl got into porn in the first place. It was not like she had abusive parents, or was extremely poor and had no other prospects in life. In other words, there was just nothing miserable or hopeless about her life at all, so why does she decided to make such a drastic life changing decision? The movie is never really clear on it and lets stuff just happen, without letting it have an emotional impact neither.

So maybe her life starts spiraling down once she gets into porn? No, on the contrary actually. She has more money and friends than ever before, so what is the movie actually trying to do or say? Bottomline is that it's trying to be dramatic, without letting anything on the screen come across as dramatic. What a weird and terribly ineffective approach for a drama to take.

It's as if the movie itself also realized that it's drama and main character weren't really working out, since it decides to throw in a bunch of more characters, with each their own things going on. Some of it feels out of place, while some of it does indeed work out more interestingly. It gives the movie at least some variety.

So no, I actually didn't completely hated watching this movie but it still made me constantly go; what's the point of all of it and why am I watching this in the first place?

And the ending...well, it wraps things up but it doesn't ever reach a satisfying conclusion with anything. The movie just ends, without making it feel like everything is done with as well. The movie does indeed leave more questions than answers but on the other hand, you won't care enough about this movie or any of the characters to truly want to see all of the questions getting answered.

A mostly failed independent drama, that you real easily could do without.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/