Holland

And it’s probably best if you don’t read this because nobody wants to hear someone else talk about how the book was better than the movie and how it was ruined by whitewashing it the way Hollywood always does. And nobody wants to hear somebody give away a bunch of spoilers just to complain about a movie they didn’t like.

     Cherry (2021, Anthony and Joe Russo) is a movie about junkies that feels like it was made by boring middle-aged white people whose target audience is boring, sheltered white teenagers. Everything this movie does misses the mark. The casting of the innocent, safe, boy next door with his squeaky high pitched voice and his dull, blank, kewpie doll are media bait targeting the youth market with the lure of counterfeit rebelliousness. 

     Also like every other Hollywood movie about junkies, Cherry conforms within the predictable arc of the rise and fall of a high that ends with loss, then punishment, then redemption through true love. There’re so many sappy scenes added that weren’t in the book. In the book Cherry and his wife cheat on each other habitually, and all of the love is drained from their marriage. But in the movie they’re ever-faithful and their love saves them from a harrowing bout with drugs that they manage to free themselves from. But the biggest divergence is the way they jettisoned the original ending. In the book, this despicable junkie couple just keep on carrying out the same acts of amoral, criminal desperation and shooting up heroin until you turn the page and it’s over. And what’s brilliant about that moment is it makes sense to depict addiction by showing characters that keep using. That’s what addiction is, right? But in the movie there’s now a new scene where the main character goes to prison. Cherry ends with him cleaning up and his wife apparently clean too, so they can live happily ever after. But why?

 

     Okay, then there’s the score. Obnoxiously, Cherry is wall to walled with symphonic orchestral arrangements that range from tender to romantic. As if there’s nothing more tender and romantic than drug addicted white twentysomethings. And the songs that pop up are adult contemporary bland tracks pulled from the muzak sampler of a Starbucks. Whereas the book is a moral latrine of unsympathetic, nihilistic, broken, dying animals that builds its milieu through detailed backstories of a large body of characters, many of which come and go never to return; the movie follows a few characters and replaces the pathos its characters solicit with the word fuck and vomiting. 

     None of the methods of filming in Cherry make sense either. For all the drone and crane overhead shots and sweeping pursuit vehicle moves, does the narrative ever benefit from them? Why the p.o.v. from inside the rectum in the prostate exam? To whom is that humor aimed? And worst, why all the mannequin challenge shots? Maybe all of this has been market researched and will amass a huge fanbase of youth receptive to its charms so why should I care?

 

2/25/2021 Landmark Midtown Art Cinema

Atlanta, GA

DCP