''Cherry 2000'' is a 1988 American

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

action film The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since the 1980s. While some scholars such as D ...

directed by Steve De Jarnatt and starring David Andrews,

Melanie Griffith Melanie Richards Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. Born in Manhattan to actress Tippi Hedren, she was raised mainly in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at age 16. In 1975, 17-year-old ...

, Tim Thomerson and

Pamela Gidley Pamela Catherine Gidley (June 11, 1965 – April 16, 2018) was an American actress and model. She began her career as an actress in 1986, debuting in the film ''Thrashin' (film), Thrashin, before appearing in a number of films, including ''Dud ...

. It was produced by Edward R. Pressman and Caldecot Chubb. The screenplay was by

Michael Almereyda Michael Almereyda (born April 7, 1959) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He studied art history at Harvard University but dropped out after three years to pursue filmmaking. He acquired a Hollywood agent on the strengt ...

. Critic reviews were generally mixed.

Plot

In the year 2017, the United States has fragmented into

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction are genres of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astronom ...

wastelands with a few civilized areas. An ongoing economic crisis has led to the

recycling Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the propert ...

of aging 20th-century mechanical and technological equipment. Society has also become averse to intimacy, as well as both increasingly hypersexualized and bureaucratic. Robotic technology has produced

gynoid A gynoid, or fembot, is a feminine humanoid robot. Gynoids appear widely in science fiction films and arts. As more realistic humanoid robot design becomes technologically possible, they are also emerging in real-life robot design. Just like an ...

s as substitutes for wives. The declining instances of actual sex among men and women is litigious, with one brothel having lawyers draft up contracts detailing the intended sexual rendezvous. Recycling executive Sam Treadwell owns a Cherry 2000 model as his wife. After she short circuits during sex on a wet kitchen floor, Sam is told by a repairman that she is damaged beyond repair, though her rare and valuable memory disk, which contains her entire personality, can be used in a new body if the same model can be found. A gynoid dealer tells Sam that the Cherry 2000 model is no longer produced and that the only remaining ones are in a defunct warehouse in "Zone 7", a particularly dangerous, lawless area. With Cherry's memory disk stored in a device that plays back Cherry's voice, Sam hires Edith "E" Johnson, a tough tracker, to guide him to the factory. They set off in Edith's heavily modified 1965 Ford Mustang. Entering Zone 7, they encounter Lester, a wasteland overlord with deranged subordinates. Edith and Sam take refuge in an underground reservoir occupied by Six-Fingered Jake, an elderly tracker who was Edith's mentor. When Lester's men attack, the three attempt to escape, but Sam is knocked unconscious and taken to a 1950s-styled motel/village. Ginger, one of Lester's gang, reveals herself as Sam's ex-girlfriend, previously known as Elaine. Lester decides to induct Sam into the group, and Sam, believing that Edith and Jake are dead, goes along for a while. When he witnesses the group sadistically murdering a tracker, Sam decides to escape and runs into Edith and Jake, still quite alive. Jake, who had earlier led Sam to believe that the Cherry 2000 memory disk had been lost, still has it and gives it to Edith while he stays behind to draw off Lester's gang. Sam, a veteran of earlier wars, shows that he is a capable fighter, and Edith begins to have feelings for him. Sam's own growing feelings toward Edith, though, are derailed when he hears Cherry's voice accidentally play on the audio device. Continuing to work their way to the gynoid warehouse, they arrive at a brothel/gas station owned by Snappy Tom, a friend of Jake's, where a dilapidated

Aeronca Champion The Aeronca Model 7 Champion, commonly known as the "Champ", or "Airknocker",Bellanca Aircraft Corp, " d: "The Champ only $4,995"" ''Flying Annual & Pilots' Guide,'' 1971 ed., pp.36–37 iff-Davis NY is a single-engine light airplane with a ...

light airplane is stored. Edith repairs the plane using parts from the Mustang. Jake catches up with the group and reminisces with Snappy Tom, but Snappy's live-in girlfriend betrays their location to Lester over the radio and shoots Jake in the back. Edith and Sam manage to escape in the plane. Sam is almost ready to abandon the quest, but Edith is determined to complete her job as a tracker so Jake's death will not become meaningless. As they land, Zone 7 is revealed to be actually the abandoned ruins of

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

and the gynoid "warehouse" is actually a casino. Sam finally finds a functional Cherry 2000 model and activates her with the memory disk; however, being programmed only for home life and sex, the robot is incapable of adapting to the current dangerous situation when Lester and his gang attack. In an extended battle, Sam, Edith, and Cherry climb aboard the airplane, but their combined weight prevents takeoff. Edith jumps out so that Sam and the robot can escape, but Sam realizes that Cherry cannot provide the human interaction that he and Edith have had and turns the plane around. Cherry, programmed to fulfill Sam's wishes, offers to bring him a Pepsi, so he sends her away as he and Edith fight off Lester's gang and take off in the plane. When Lester tries to lasso the plane, he gets caught in the rope and hangs himself from one of the ancient Las Vegas neon casino signs. Edith and Sam kiss as they fly away into the sunset.

Cast

* David Andrews as Sam Treadwell *

as Edith "E" Johnson * Tim Thomerson as Lester *

as Cherry, a Cherry 2000 model * Harry Carey Jr. as Tom "Snappy Tom" * Jennifer Mayo as Randa, Snappy Tom's Girlfriend * Ben Johnson as Jake "Six-Fingered Jake" *

Brion James Brion Howard James (February 20, 1945 – August 7, 1999) was an American character actor. He portrayed Leon Kowalski in '' Blade Runner'' and appeared in '' Southern Comfort'', '' 48 Hrs.'', ''Another 48 Hrs.'', '' Silverado'', '' Tango & Cash'', ...

as Stacy *

Marshall Bell Archibald Marshall Bell (born September 28, 1942) is an American character actor. He has appeared in many character roles in movies and television. He is known for roles in '' A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge'' (1985), '' Stand b ...

as Bill *

Laurence Fishburne Laurence John Fishburne III (born July 30, 1961) is an American actor. Throughout his career, he has gained recognition for his roles on stage and screen as militant and authoritative characters. List of awards and nominations received by Laur ...

(credited as Larry Fishburne) as Glu Glu Lawyer * Michael C. Gwynne as "Slim" * Jack Thibeau as Stubby Man * Robert Zdar as Chet * Jennifer Balgobin as Glory Hole Clerk * Cameron Milzer as Elaine / Ginger

Location

According to the credits, the film was shot entirely in Nevada. The van plunging into an open pit was shot at Three Kids Mine. The river-crossing sequence was filmed at the

Hoover Dam The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado, Black Canyon of the Colorado River (U.S.), Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, d ...

. Scenes at the Sky Ranch were filmed at the Beehive group camping area in the Valley of Fire State Park. E and Sam's first kiss was filmed in the upper reaches of the Las Vegas Wash. Adobe Flats was filmed at Eldorado Valley Dry Lake Bed. The town of Glory Hole was filmed in Goldfield, Nevada. The Integratron building in Landers, California, was used as the casino that was the "abandoned manufacturing plant" holding a rare copy of the outdated Cherry 2000 gynoid at the end of the film. The fortress-like building featured in the film is in Commerce, California, at the location of a former tire factory, which was renovated and transformed into the Citadel Outlet Mall.

Release

After its completion in December 1985,

Orion Pictures Orion Releasing, LLC (Trade name, doing business as Orion Pictures) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon (company), Amazon. It was founded in 1978 as Ori ...

originally scheduled ''Cherry 2000'' for a U.S. release on August 15, 1986. Sometime later, the date was postponed to March 1987, then September 1987. An article in ''The Times Leader'' commented on May 22, 1987, that the film had been "shelved since 986 this western is set in the 21st century. Hope it opens by then." Joseph Gelmins wrote in ''

Newsday ''Newsday'' is a daily newspaper in the United States primarily serving Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI" ...

'' that it was scheduled for September. In October 1987, ''

The Palm Beach Post ''The Palm Beach Post'' is an American daily newspaper serving Palm Beach County in South Florida, and parts of the Treasure Coast. On March 18, 2018, in a deal worth US$42.35 million, ''The Palm Beach Post'' and '' The Palm Beach Daily News' ...

'' announced the film for release in February 1988. Producer Edward R. Pressman confessed that ''Cherry 2000''s combination of genres, styles, and themes stumped promoters at Orion, resulting in its repeated shelving. On discussing the delays of the film, Pressman stated that the film was a "tough sell" while the director Steve DeJarnatt stated "no one who's seen it hates it or anything" and that "It's also kind of a soft film. I don't think anyone really knows how to market it."

Home media

''Cherry 2000'' was released on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

in North America by

Orion Home Video Orion may refer to: Common meanings * Orion (constellation), named after the mythical hunter * Orion (mythology), a hunter in Greek mythology Arts and media Fictional entities Characters and species * Orion (character), a DC Comics c ...

on November 17, 1988. A reviewer in ''Variety'' noted that the film had "gone fast to video after the briefest of theatrical screenings".

Reception

The film holds a 38% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

based on 21 reviews, with a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

of 4.24/10. The site's consensus reads: "While ''Cherry 2000'' has a certain low-budget appeal, all but the most ardent genre enthusiasts are likely to find its silly story and uneven performances unintentionally amusing". Among contemporary reviews, the 1988 '' Variety's Film Reviews'' regarded Melanie Griffith as the film's greatest asset, who "lifts the material whenever she's on screen", and described the production as "quite lavish and the Nevada locations suitably rugged. Production design by John J. Moore is a major plus."

References

Sources

External links

* * {{rotten-tomatoes, cherry_2000, Cherry 2000 *
Cherry 2000
' at

Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcas ...

1988 films 1988 action comedy films 1980s science fiction comedy films 1988 independent films 1980s satirical films 1980s science fiction action films American action comedy films American science fiction comedy films American independent films American satirical films American science fiction action films Films about androids Fictional gynoids Films scored by Basil Poledouris Films set in 2017 Films set in the future Films shot in California Films shot in the Las Vegas Valley Films shot in Los Angeles Films shot in Nevada Orion Pictures films American post-apocalyptic films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films 1988 science fiction films English-language science fiction comedy films English-language science fiction action films English-language independent films English-language action comedy films