Working the
quirk thing

>> Cherish is odd but not on

by MATTHEW HAYS

Let there be no confusion about it. In a movie world soaked in cookie-cutter cloning, quirky, offbeat, off-kilter, wacky and/or unusual (or fill in the blank with synonym of choice) films should primarily be praised. They were undoubtedly harder to make and are often far more refreshing than the usual pap that gets projected our way.

But then there are those films that get so wrapped up in being coolly unusual that they lose their way. Sadly, Finn Taylor’s second feature (after his ’97 Sundance debut Dream With the Fishes) falls pretty securely into that category.
Titled Cherish, the film (also penned by Taylor) has a nifty premise. One unusual gal (Robin Tunney), a lite-rock radio addict, finds her life drab and lonely. When on her dream date (with Jason Priestley), she’s soon taken hostage by a mysterious man who forces her to drive away in her car. Through no fault of her own, she hits a cop and kills him. Said bad guy runs away and she takes the blame as a drunk driver, meaning imprisonment.

Or, as indie movie logic would have it, she could be bound to her home via electronic surveillance (the kind that means a doggie tag around the foot). In the meantime, mysterious bad guy is back to stalk her and she realizes she must prove his existence or she’ll get life in prison at her impending trial.
Certainly, there are some fun ideas in Cherish. But one gets the sense that Taylor was trying so hard to impress the jaded filmgoing set that he got carried away with all that quirkiness. After a while, the film risks downright tedium. Taylor certainly gets marks for effort, though—he even threw in a subplot about a gay Jewish disabled dwarf for good measure.

Cherish feels like someone got carried away with novelty and forgot about the movie. Unusual business can be the stuff of great movies, but on its own—without sturdy plot and character development—it can simply feel too much like empty posing. :

Cherish opens Friday, June 21