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Cherish

2002, Movie, R, 100 mins

Cherish: Review

CHERISH
starstarstarstar
Love torments the socially maladjusted heroine of this dark romance, San Francisco-based computer programmer Zoe Adler (Robin Tunney). Zoe is a prisoner of poor social skills, who dresses like a shut-in and babbles inanely when she tries to make small talk. Ironically (because this film is all about irony), Zoe can't stand being alone, and her neediness just drives people further away. "I wouldn't date so many guys," she tells her therapist plaintively, "if one of them would ever call me back." She fantasizes about flirty co-worker Andrew (Jason Priestly), who greets all the girls with a breezy, "Hi, beautiful," and listens obsessively to nothing-but-love-songs station KXCH. Zoe finally works up the nerve to talk to Andrew at an after-work get-together (needless to say, she had to crash it), but drinks too much and staggers out to her car and into an entirely different movie, a thriller in which a stranger forces his way into the passenger seat and orders her to start driving. When a bicycle cop looks their way suspiciously, the stranger mows him down and flees, leaving Zoe to take the rap. Naturally, no one believes the mystery-man story, but Zoe's lawyer (Nora Dunn) gets her out of jail and into an electronic bracelet program while she awaits trial. Bankrupt and friendless, Zoe winds up electronically tethered to her (enviably large) apartment in a bad neighborhood. She's also back in the darkly comic romance movie, reinventing herself because there's nothing else to do: She gets her look together; befriends Max (Ricardo Gil), her angry, wheelchair-bound downstairs neighbor; and develops a tentatively intimate relationship with deputy Bill Daly (Tim Blake Nelson), who's charged with monitoring her house arrest. Meanwhile, the mystery cop-killer is still looking for the girl of his dreams, keeping the thriller alive by making creepy calls to Zoe's limited circle of acquaintances. Inspired by the savvy insight that many pop love songs have a creepily obsessive subtext (starting with the syrupy title tune, "Cherish"), writer-director Finn Taylor's story pivots on the fact that both Zoe and her stalker are enslaved by fantasy lives so vivid they eclipse the real world, and that Daly is headed down the same path. The idea is more interesting than the screenplay, which lags badly in the middle and lurches between not-very-funny comedy, unconvincing dramatics and some last-minute action strongly reminiscent of RUN LOLA RUN. Great soundtrack, though. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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