RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

Cherry 2000 (1988)
Ah, the eighties, when anything marked '2000' had a futuristic ring to it
Melanie Griffith is supposed to play it cool, I guess, but just comes across as sleepwalking.

  "In the YEEEEAR TWO THOU-saaaaaaaaand..."

Pretty sure this was shelved and released a couple years after its production when Griffith made WORKING GIRL... I certainly enjoyed it enough as a, uhh, pubescent boy.  Griffith was never a good actress but she looked great here. I wish she'd kept the Milla Jovavich/FIFTH ELEMENT hairstyle instead of getting a huge 80s Big Hair perm, which somehow she retained through much of the 90s.......

After watching the nightmarish 1981 film ROAR, in which Griffith was really clawed in the face by a lion and required reconstructive surgery, I've wondered if Griffith's general lack of expressiveness and blase attitude (re: playing "it cool"/"sleepwalking") was maybe due to partial facial paralysis and/or PTSD!

[Dr. Whom]

Well it is dripping with 80s cool, and if my younger self had seen it at the time, I am sure I would have thought it ultra-cool

It has been a while since I've seen a movie with peak Melanie Griffith, but I saw Something Wild when it came out, and there she blew me away. I don't think Cherry 2000 would have had quite the same effect. Come to think of it, both movies have a similar premise: yuppie gets drawn into a violent adventure with a carefree woman. Something Wild does it infinitely better.

Not that there is that much wrong with Cherry 2000. In fact, I enjoyed it rather more than I thought I would, mainly because of the completely bonkers world building. It is just that it doesn't have that much going for it either. And that is my main criterium for deciding between the good movie/bad movie category: is it worth your time. Cherry 2000 is just too much by the numbers.

[M.10rda]

You're right - SOMETHING WILD is a great movie. Again, when it comes to Griffith, maybe it's all about the hair!