Science fiction send-up takes inventive look at future

Press, 12 September 1988, Page 4

Science fiction send-up takes inventive look at future

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“CHERRY 2000” Directed by Steve de Jarnatt Screenplay by Michael Almereyda In much the same spirit in which “Aliens” brought us Rambolina, that great female fantasy figure who dispatched undesirables with a giant machine-gun, “Cherry 2000” (Metro) gives us Mad Maxine doing much the same thing back on Earth in the not-too-distant future. In a tongue-in-cheek send-up of such glimpses into a benighted future as “Mad Max” and “Blade Runner,” this small-bud-get, but nevertheless highly inventive, sci-fi adventure presents us a spunky Melanie Griffith as E.. Johnson, a tracker of the wastelands, hired to retrieve a female android model from the robot graveyards. “Cherry 2000,” the semi-pornographic title of the film, actually refers to the most desirable line of robotic playmates whose sole programme is to gratify their male masters. These models, however, are not just your inflatable-rubber type of the primitive 1980 s, but a warm, walking, talking, peaches and cream variety that can pander to the ego of any man.

The film never makes it clear whether male

models are also available to keep the feminists of the future happy, but the Cherry 2000 model has been discontinued by the worried authorities because it is making men “soft and unaggressive.” In keeping with the film’s sleazy humour, Sam Treadwell (David Andrews), a well-off yuppie who can afford his very own Cherry 2000, loses her when she shortcircuits while they are making love on the wet kitchen floor.

Sam is distraught by the loss of his much-loved playmate, but he has managed to keep her personality disc, so all he has to do is find another intact model and insert the disc'to be able to continue where he left off. Such robots are hard to come by, however, and that is where the real-life female, E. Johnson, comes in. She is tough, aggressive and talks back, nothing like the amenable surrogate Sam has been used to.

After some dithering in the rough border town of Big Glory Hole, on the edge of the badlands, they set off for the dunes of the once-glorious Las Vegas, which is now recognisable only from a few neon signs and statues jutting out of the sand. This is where the authori-

ties have stored no-longer-wanted robot models.

To get there, our duo have to run the gauntlet of ruthless bandits, who pass the time plundering and torturing each other —- particularly the ruthless Lester (Tim Thomerson), a psychopath who has set up his own desert barbecue society.

The film-makers have been resourceful in the use of natural locations, with a particularly exciting shoot-out, where E. Johson’s car is lifted into the air by a giant crane on top of the Hoover Dam, and then dropped into the dam’s massive spillway tunnel. • Many old-time actors, such as Ben Johnson, as the lengendary Six-Finger Jake, who lives in a cave with a jukebox and a vast stockpile of toasters; and Harry Carey jun., as the owner of a brothel and diner in the middle of the desert, provide allusions

to earlier movies, as do fleeting glimpses of the robots from “Forbidden Plant” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

David Andrews may not be another Indiana Jones,

nor Melanie Griffith the female answer to Mad Max, but on a less ambitious scale, “Cherry 2000” is by far the best B-grade adventure-comedy of the year.