About Cherry
About Cherry
R | 21 September 2012 (USA)
About Cherry Trailers

A drama centered on a troubled young woman who moves to San Francisco, where she gets involved in pornography and aligns herself with a cocaine-addicted lawyer.

Reviews
Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Protraph Lack of good storyline.
CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
jtncsmistad You've seen it all before. Poor little poor girl from a horror show home comes to the big bad city and is lured into the porn biz. Or maybe that's just me (he winks here).The twist in "About Cherry" is that this cheeky chick (the stupefyingly gorgeous Ashley Hinshaw) doesn't want to bust out of the skin trade at all. Screw that. In fact, she may have just laid into a brand spankin' new career! And then they all boinked happily ever after (he snickers here).
millsspiers Contrary to a lot of the reviews I've read so far, I thought this was a very good movie in almost every respect. I can't actually think of a criticism.The acting was excellent by the entire cast. The cinematography flowed, the mood was sustained. The main character was strong, independent, and the film described a journey, a coming of age.Many corners were turned, by several of the cast.I felt the story had great heart. Characters and relationships were explored. The script was sharp and perceptive. There was much to read in between the lines.What can I say?The film had sex in it. Big deal. It was only the backdrop.It's as if.....some reviewers are disappointed there was no moral opprobrium, not enough grubbiness. Are we to be unimpressed because the film doesn't have a negative take on the porn industry? This seems to me to possibly be a reflection of prior expectations. Isn't there room, nowadays, for films which don't necessarily wring their hands about porn?It's not as if we are gonna come away and think the porn industry is all wonderful.
Tad Pole " . . . disgust me." James Franco, as "cokehead" trial lawyer Francis, 18-year-old title porn starlet "Cherry's" (nee Angelina) short-term sugar daddy, seems out-of-character in his kiss-off remarks to her, and certainly not very WWCD (that is, What Would Charlie Sheen Do). This feature debut of writer\director Stephen Elliott is not marked by any particular strengths in its characterizations. Like most direct-to-video flicks featuring DVD covers that will pass the "sniff test" in "family" video stores while suggesting young female nudity, the actual amount of sex and birthday suits displayed in the movie itself is liable to leave the renter feeling ripped-off (even it he or she has waited until this title made its way to the two-for-a-dollar section of the store). Lacking the weight of a TV "after school special," this effort at "sexploitation" concludes with a moral along the lines of "every nice girl should do at least one porno to sow her wild oats, but then get behind the camera before the next big AIDS scare comes along." If the intention here is to make sex boring, ABOUT CHERRY succeeds nicely.
zuhair_v I'm not going to pretend to have liked the film's beliefs. It show us – although vaguely – the 'behind-the-scenes' of the internet porn industry. I believe we have watched them 'making-of-porn films' before: 'Boogie Nights, 1997'; '8mm, 1999'; 'Wonderland, 2003'; 'The Girlfriend Experience, 2009' and so it goes. These movies showed us the consequences of choice and greed; it was one of those first-times when you learned about the dark side of something you acquired pleasure from. 'About Cherry' doesn't show you consequences, it does not make you feel sympathy for the lead and by doing so we start to dislike her halfway into the film. Breaking most rules of the genre, 'Cherry' takes us somewhere the movie itself doesn't know yet (maybe few months from now and we will have theories). It however succeeds in giving rise to emotions long buried. It made me uncomfortable in a hateful way. I disliked the lead character, played brilliantly by Ashley Hinshaw who is mostly holding back her emotions throughout the film, well at least more than her clothes. We've seen this before, the dysfunctional family, the runaway under-age who ends up being a porn star; 'Star 80, 1983', anyone? The movie doesn't show us the disenchantment, the humdrum of making a porn movie although Hinshaw's transformation is something the filmmakers can be proud of; transformation into a successful person in the business of sex. Just what are they trying to tell us, is what makes you want to pull the hair. All bad things happen to good people; this movie crosses that out and says: bad people deserve bad things. The only trouble with this is that the 'bad' looks pretty alright to me, maybe even nice. Money and sex and suits with breathtaking view of San Francisco and what have you. There's one more thing I'm not going to do here; not judge. Getting laid every damn day and getting paid for it and also enjoying it (to hell with the tears, we've seen them done better) – as the movie suggests makes me not like anyone but Dev Patel's character. The charming, junkie-lawyer/ex-painter Franco is a treat alright but what in the Lord's name happened to Heather Graham? She's brooding most of the time and when she's not brooding most of the time she's having sex with another woman (dykes!). To top that, in a film filled with scenes of nudity and explicit sex she does not bare, not even a flash. In the end the movie is a build-up to more movies about internet-porn, like the upcoming 'Middlemen'. Lili Taylor also starred in 'The Notorious Bettie Page, 2005', which is an effective film, if I remember well. In the end it is also a beginning to an era of showing the glitz and glamour of the thirteen billion dollar porn industry and that it can be unending if you want it to be.