Cherry 2000

It's 2017 and the world has gone to shit (yay, only three years to go). America has turned into a wasteland with just a few pockets of civilised society left. On the plus side robotic technology has come on leaps and bounds, and you can now buy yourself a fully realistic android woman. This is just as well, because apparently relations with real women are increasingly hard to find and require a lawyer to draw up a contract in advance (no, seriously). Sam Treadwell has one of these android woman types, but she short circuits. The rest of the film is his quest to find a replacement.

The film begins with cheesy saxophone music and a silhouette of Sam's android woman getting dressed. At this point I was wondering exactly what sort of film this was. Sam's android is called Cherry and she's a 2000 model, hence the title Cherry 2000. Cherry is getting all tarted up, ready for when Sam arrives home. And yes, she's already got dinner and desert on the go. Sam (who looks eerily like Don Johnson) is a city trader of some kind. So Don Johnson arrives home and Cherry fixes his dinner and desert and asks him rather banal questions about his day. She starts doing the dishes, Don comes over and they start to have sexytime on the kitchen floor. Cherry has left the water running and soon it spills over onto the floor so they end up rolling around in water and soap suds. Cherry then short circuits as a result of the wet floor. Wait, so they have the technology to make perfect, human looking androids but they don't have the technology to make them water resistant? Oh well, whatever.

Don takes out her personality chip (which is actually a tiny cd) and puts it in a small playback device that he has. This enables him to listen to Cherry's voice even though she's expired. He then rather creepily has her lay in bed beside him while playing back her voice. Don's work colleagues encourage him to go out with them to a place where they plan to, um... hire ladies. Don eventually agrees, but once there he realises that he just wants Cherry back.

The next day Don takes Cherry to the local android repair guy. But he says she's beyond repair because she took on so much water. From the kitchen sink? I'm guessing sexytime in the bathroom is out of the question then. The android repair guy shows Don some other android models, but he doesn't like any of them and just wants Cherry. The repair guy says Don will have a hell of a job getting hold of one since they stopped manufacturing them before America went to shit.

Don goes about his day to day work, but is a sad, mopey bastard because he doesn't have his beloved Cherry. But then the android repair guy calls and says there's a abandoned factory that used to produce Cherry 2000s still in existence that may still have some of the old stock. The snag? The factory is located in "Zone 7", a particularly lawless area of the wasteland. The repair guy says Don will need to hire a tracker if he is to venture into Zone 7 to find a replacement Cherry.

Don travels to the edge of Zone 7 and to the town of Glory Hole (ahem) in search of a tracker. He finds a tracker called Edith Johnson (no relation to Don). Edith, or E for short is played by a young, red haired, hot looking Melanie Griffith (who incidentally actually married Don Johnson - twice in fact). In this film she reminds me a bit of a red headed version of Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner, which is no bad thing. So Don and E travel into Zone 7 in E's Mustang, which is nice if you happen to like American muscle cars (thankfully they don't encounter any corners).

They encounter a guy called Lester who is a nasty piece of work. He's a sort of self-proclaimed overlord of the area with many minions who he dispenses with if things don't go his way. Don and E end up separated and Don ends up staying with Lester, but Don quickly realises that Lester is a complete nutter and makes his escape to find E waiting for him. E and Don then travel to see Jake, an old tracker guy who taught E everything that she knows and E regards Jake as a father figure.

E starts to develop feelings for Don, but Don just keeps playing his stupid cd with Cherry's voice on it. E steals Cherry's cd and lies to Don, telling him that it has been lost. E and Don have a passionate session on the bonnet of E's car, but Cherry's cd is in E's back pocket and starts playing as she's on the bonnet, so that kind of puts a dampener on things.

Lester catches up with E and Don, but they manage to make their escape in an old plane that E has managed to repair. Sadly though Jake is killed during the escape. Don and E then fly on to the abandoned android factory, which is in the ruins of Las Vegas. They enter the factory and find a load of Cherry models, but E says Don must be quick in choosing one as Lester isn't far behind. Don finds a model to his liking and pops the personality cd in. Cherry comes to life and the three of them make their escape. Lester arrives and there's a gunfight. The three of them try to take off in the plane but there's too much weight. E jumps out and the plane lifts off with Don and Cherry on board. Don looks around and sees that E is gone. He sees her below, behind a barricade trying to fend off gunfire from Lester and his minions.

Don circles the plane around and lands. He asks Cherry to go and get him a Pepsi and so Cherry gets out of the plane. He tells E to jump on board. E does so and the two of them take off, leaving Cherry behind. Don and E fly off into the distance. Hooray! The end.

This film wasn't that bad. But I think I may be a bit biased as I quite enjoyed seeing a red haired Melanie Griffith kicking ass. She's sexy, confident and knows her stuff. This is in stark contrast to the android Cherry. Yes she has the looks, but her personality and intelligence are completely lacking. And when Sam tries to engage her in anything but the most basic of conversations, she just doesn't understand and gives up. That's the part I struggled to believe in this film. I couldn't understand Sam's complete and utter devotion to Cherry. Sam kept saying that their relationship was more than physical, and that it was Cherry's personality that he loved. But from what I could tell Cherry didn't have a personality. And the little of it she did have was on her personality chip anyway, which Sam of course still had. I couldn't see why Sam needed to go to all that trouble (i.e. real people getting killed) just to have the same model of android. There were many other just as attractive models that Sam could've just bought and put Cherry's personality chip in.

That aside it wasn't too bad. Cherry is a definite stereotype, but then she is an android. And this is contrasted by E's no-nonsense ass kickery. This is a film from the 80's and it shows. 80's hair, 80's music, 80's attitudes towards work and money, it's all there. There isn't much plot to speak of. There aren't really any special effects, it's just a Mustang driving in the desert and people getting shot. The acting and the dialogue aren't anything special. But still, I enjoyed it. This film is the food equivalent of junk food. But then every so often it's good to have junk food, you just don't want a diet of it all the time.

Apparently there were rumours of a remake, and Melanie Griffith had even suggested that her daughter (Dakota Johnson) play her character in the new film. But nothing seems to have happened as yet. Unlike certain other films, I would definitely welcome a remake of this. I don't have any deep feelings towards this film, so it's not possible to ruin my childhood memories with a remake. In the meantime you could do better than to watch this, but you could do a whole lot worse too. I'm looking at you, RoboCop 2014.

Rocketship X-M

I had every intention of watching this film so that I could rip the piss out of it. But in the end I discovered that I couldn't. Because considering this is a sci-fi film made in 1950, it's actually pretty competently done. And when you consider this film was shot in just 18 days in order to get it out into movie theatres, it's even more impressive.

The basic idea here is that the first manned mission to the moon ends up wildly off course and heading towards Mars instead. Upon reaching Mars the crew decide the opportunity to explore the red planet is one that shouldn't be missed and so they decide to land. The crew here consists of four men and one woman. One of the male actors in this looked very familiar to me. Then it suddenly dawned on me... it's Lloyd Bridges. The name may not be familiar to you, but I'm sure the face will, as Lloyd went on to play the "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit..." guy in the Airplane movies. Anyway, in this film he plays the pilot of the titular rocketship. There's also an older doctor guy who conceived the rocket, his attractive, young female assistant who is a mathematics nerd, another guy who is the navigator, and a fourth guy whose role I can't remember, but he dies anyway (spoiler).

The film starts with a press conference pre-flight where it's announced that this particular rocket is heading for the moon. The press conference is where we are first introduced to the crew. Where it veers a little from reality here is that the press conference takes place approximately 15 minutes before the launch. In reality of course the crew would've long since boarded the rocket. Also the crew are all wearing leather bomber jackets and look more like WW2 pilots than astronauts. But these things can be forgiven when you consider what they actually got right. The doctor guy then explains the rocket and the journey to the press. He talks about trajectories, orbits, gravity and all good sciency type shit. Fairly impressive stuff. He also describes the rocket, which is built from several stages (again good). The only bit that this film (and every other film of the time) gets wrong is that the rocket reverses down to the surface and uses its engines to land, both when landing on the moon and back on earth. In reality you of course have a separate lander for the moon and your capsule lands back on earth via parachute. But again, for the time it's pretty impressive.

After the press conference the crew climbs aboard the rocket. The rocket's crew module is quite impressive too. Well, at least it looks as if they're inside a cylindrical rocket and not just sat in a room. Plus they enter they module from a sealed hatch in the floor, climbing up a ladder through the lower stage, which has several fuel tanks within it. Again, not too bad really.

So the rocket blasts off and they all make comical faces to presumably show that they're being affected by the g-forces. Lisa, the female of the crew, looks like she's having some sort of "crisis". The external shot of the rocket taking off looks excellent and very realistic. The reason for this is that the film used footage of a V-2 rocket taking off. Still, it works for me. And I'd rather they do that than use some naff looking special effect instead. Once they're in orbit the shots of the earth out of the window look pretty good too. They also attempt to show weightlessness too, as one of the crew's jackets drifts upwards from its place upon the back of a chair. Also the straps to their bunks start floating upwards too. Apparently lighter objects can be weightless, but a human is too heavy to float. Still, have to give them credit again for the effort.

Once on their way to the moon, they are soon left powerless and adrift. Upon checking the engines and discovering that they're fine, the doctor guy concludes that the fuel mixture must be wrong. Lisa and the doctor guy then attempt to discover what's wrong by doing some equations and stuff. The doctor guy and Lisa come up with different results. The doctor guy proclaims that Lisa has made an error and that his calculations are correct. At this point they can only continue using one of their sets of calculations because to continue using both would take too much time. The doctor guy insists they use his calculations. Lisa has an emotional outburst and protests, but then immediately apologises. The doctor guy then forgives her for "momentarily being a woman". Yes, 1950s sexism is in full force in this film.

Once the calculations are made and they have the corrected fuel mixture, two of the guys head below to the engine compartment to make the adjustments (cue floating spanners). The adjustments are made and the guys head back to the crew module. Upon restarting the engines they accelerate way too quickly and everyone is rendered unconscious while the speed continues to climb. The pilot guy manages to kill the engines before he blacks out, but by that time they're already travelling way too fast with nothing much to stop them.

When they all come to the doctor guy proclaims that they've all been out of it for days. Quite how he knows this without checking a watch or a calendar I don't know. Actually no one thinks to do this, as Lisa says that they'll "never know" exactly how long they've been out for. I thought knowing the date and time was pretty important when it comes to navigating in space, but apparently not. The doctor guy looks out of the window and... holy shit there's Mars. So they unanimously decide that they must attempt a landing and explore. At this point I should point out that they would have to have been unconscious for several months, not several days to arrive at Mars, but then I'm sure you all knew that already.

So they successfully land on the surface of Mars. The doctor guy says they won't need their pressure suits because Mars has an atmosphere. The fact that it's 100 times thinner than that of the earth, 95 percent carbon dioxide and bloody freezing doesn't seem to matter much. But then they barely knew anything about the moon in 1950, let alone Mars. But when they do venture out onto the surface it's good to see that they are at least wearing breathing apparatus.

The film does something quite clever for the scenes on the surface of Mars, namely it uses a sepia tone film. This comes as quite a surprise after watching in black and white up to this point, and I have to say it's pretty effective. They discover a relic on the surface which indicates an extremely intelligent race once lived on Mars. But they also discover that Mars is highly radioactive and that this civilisation was destroyed, presumably by nuclear weapons. The doctor says something about intelligence always leading to self destruction (I think you can see where this is going now).

They decide to get some rest in a cave. One of the guys who can't sleep spots some people coming towards them and alerts the others. The people run off before any of the others see them, but our friends see their tracks in the martian surface so they decide to follow. They end up walking through a ravine (never a good idea) and they see people in loin cloths carrying spears above them. The doctor makes another comment "Atomic age to stone age" and as he does so, a boulder is pushed from above and comes crashing down towards them. The guy whose role I can't remember who dies pushes the doctor out of the way, and dies. The doctor expires soon after following a sharp implement to the back, but just before he does he tells the remaining three that it's imperative they get back to earth and tell everyone what they have found. The navigation guy gets hit by a rock. He's in a bad way, but Lisa and the pilot guy manage to drag him back to the rocket.

Once on board the ship Lisa calculates that they still have enough fuel to take off, travel back to earth and make a successful landing. That's pretty impressive considering they were going to the moon, but whatever. So they take off from Mars and head back to earth. With the navigation guy out of it this leaves time for Lisa and the pilot to have the rather inevitable falling in love scene (cue the awful, wispy violin music).

As they come closer to the earth Lisa prepares to fire up the engines for re-entry and landing, but oops... there's no fuel. Sadly she's miscalculated again. Silly 1950's girl, maybe in the future she'll learn to stick to womaning. She admits her mistake to the pilot guy. Lisa is saddened that the earth will never know the terrible truth that they learned. But then they realise that they should be able to contact mission control via radio. So they establish contact and relay all the information gathered from their trip. There then follows some more appalling "Hold me. Hold me tight" soppy dialogue before the rocket plummets to the earth and Lisa and the pilot guy are killed. Aww. The press then talk to the press guy at mission control. The press say that the mission was a failure but the press guy insists that it wasn't because of what they have learned. So much so that he insists that tomorrow they will begin construction of Rocketship X-M2. The end.

I have to say I actually enjoyed this quite a bit. It was nowhere near as naff as I thought it would be. Scientifically speaking there were a few misses, but the principles on the whole were pretty sound. This film undoubtedly carries a strong message about the dangers of an atomic civilisation and a nuclear arms race, especially relevant considering when this was made. And a film made in 1950 where the heroes die in the end?  No happy ending?  That must be pretty rare, and I commend this film for being brave enough to do it.

The big problem with this film of course is the rather stereotypical and sexist attitude towards the woman. In the pre-flight press conference a woman journalist asks Lisa "Is there any specific reason why one member of the crew should be a woman?". And before Lisa has time to answer the doctor answers for her, as if she's incapable of answering that particular question herself. Later in the film when Lisa and the pilot guy are talking Lisa says "I suppose you think that women should only cook and sew and bear children?" to which the pilot guy responds "Isn't that enough?" quickly followed by "There is such a thing as going overboard in the other direction too you know". So this film probably didn't do much to further equal opportunities for women. But then it is a film of its time, and I don't think many films of the time did that. That was still to come. So if you can looks past its scientific shortcomings and considerably old fashioned views towards women, this isn't actually a bad little film. And it's got that guy from Airplane in it, which can't be bad.

RoboCop 2014

I must admit, I had low expectations going into this film. And at no point during watching it were those expectations exceeded. Taken in isolation, this is a mediocre sci-fi film. But of course this film cannot be taken in isolation because of what it claims to be - a remake, re-imagining (or whatever the hell else you want to call it) of RoboCop.

It's a job to know where to begin. There's just so much wrong. I think one of the main problems is the rating of the film. The cinema release is 12A, which means that basically a kid of any age can watch it as long as they're accompanied by someone 18 or over. This severely limits what the film can show. But of course it greatly increases the number of people who can go and see it. And after all that's what matters, apparently. The original film was gritty, unapologetically violent, dark and funny. The new RoboCop is none of these things. Partly this is due to all the things that can't be shown of course, but mostly it's just because the plot and the writing is so weak. I may jump around a bit when I'm explaining what's wrong with this film. That may be because I'm not very good at writing reviews, but I think it's also fair to say that the film itself is rather disjointed. The original had a clear story and plot development. This film didn't seem to know what it was trying to be, or do.

So Murphy is the same honest cop with a wife and son, just as before. He has a partner called Lewis, although this time Lewis is a guy. Lewis seems to spend most of his time getting shot. But to be fair, Lewis got shot quite a bit in the original film too. They're trying to infiltrate this gun running organisation or something. Anyway, the baddies get tipped off that Lewis and Murphy are undercover cops and Lewis gets shot. But he survives after a little stay at the hospital.

Then we see Murphy at home with his wife and son. Murphy and his wife are just about to have sexytime when the car alarm goes off. Murphy goes down to switch it off and BOOM. Car blows up. This is another point where this film is just not as effective as the original. There's a disconnect here between the bad guys and Murphy. In the original film we see Murphy getting shot to shit by the bad guys. So when Murphy gets revenge on those bad guys, we're really rooting for him and can feel his anger. "I'm not arresting you anymore" is one of those classic lines that was great to hear, and we knew exactly what Murphy meant and felt. But in the new film, yes he goes after the bad guys, but it all feels a tad pointless really.

Another big difference here is that Murphy doesn't die. This was probably a way to get Murphy's wife involved in the story more. In the original film of course Murphy dies, so that's pretty much the end of his wife's involvement in the story. The police can do what they like with him. In this film his wife has to sign the consent forms for him to undergo his transformation.

So Murphy wakes up from a nice dream where he's dancing with his wife to discover that he's now RoboCop. Yes, in this film they don't wipe his memory, or ever really refer to him as RoboCop. In this film he's still basically Alex Murphy. This is another problem. The core of the original film's story was that Murphy had lost his identity and his humanity, and the rest of the film is his journey to try and get those things back. During the original film Murphy talks about himself in the third person "Murphy had a wife and son". It's not until the very last word spoken in the film that we see Murphy has rediscovered his identity. But in the new film he never really loses his identity, or his wife and son for that matter. Yes he loses his body, but his memories and identity are still very much there.

This leads to another laughable scene in the new film. So they switch Murphy on and he freaks out and does a runner. This particular RoboCop model has the advantage of being able to be shut down remotely. So that's what they do. Back at the lab Murphy starts to get the picture of what he's become. But he wants to see exactly what he is. So cue a scene where they bring in a full length mirror (although quite honestly a shaving mirror would've sufficed) and they remove the RoboCop suit so Murphy can see himself. Murphy is essentially a head, a pair of lungs and a hand. But again, because of the target audience, it just looks comical. This was done I suspect so we're not left wondering exactly how much of Murphy is left. A scene like this was not necessary in the original film because we saw Murphy get turned into hamburger by the bad guys, so we knew there was nothing left.

It also begs the question why keep the hand? Surely another robotic hand would've been better, stronger and more robust than a human hand. It seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to keep a hand. I think that's part of the reason why when I see the new RoboCop design, it just looks like a guy in a suit. That was something you could never accuse the original of. I never once doubted that the original RoboCop was basically a robot. The suit design was fantastic. The new suit looks lame. It's got this cheap plastic looking flip down visor thing. Actually the whole suit looks rather cheap and nasty. Couple that with the human hand and that fact that his head doesn't seem to fit snugly in the suit and it just looks wrong. I could've forgiven this film a lot if RoboCop himself looked awesome, but he doesn't.

They put Murphy through his paces by fighting a lot of CGI robots. Murphy mostly shoots robots in this film. Again I suspect it's because of the target audience. He shoots a few people, but there's no blood. And it's certainly not squib city like it was in the original. The shooting sequences in this film are very sterile and CGI heavy. At several points I thought I was watching a video game. The realness of the original has gone. Even Detroit, which was a crime, drug and ho ridden cesspool of a place in the original film doesn't seem so bad in the new film. Murphy battles a few ED-209s at one point, but again it's very CGI heavy. The design of ED-209 has changed too, but not for the better. And they did the unthinkable. They changed ED-209's voice!  He sounds nowhere near as menacing now. And he certainly doesn't growl any more. ED-209 is just a part of the scenery in this film and there's no iconic scene like there was in the original. Shame.

So Murphy fights crime and gets to visit his wife and son. I had a job believing the husband-wife relationship in this film. I thought the relationship between Murphy and Lewis in the original film portrayed more emotion and was far more believable. In my view it was an aspect of the film that didn't need to be there. After a while Murphy starts to get more of a sense of his self back, even though the guys at the lab try and suppress it through drugs. Murphy has the whole police department database in his memory, so he starts going about trying to solve his own attempted murder. The lab guys seem rather surprised by this. I don't know why, it seems pretty logical to me. If they didn't want him solving his own attempted murder then why not restrict the information?

Anyway, as always the head guy at OCP, or OmniCorp as it's now called turns out to be involved and there's lots of vice and corruption. The film culminates with Murphy trying to arrest the head of OmniCorp, while the head of OmniCorp is trying to get Murphy killed. Lewis is shot (again) while taking out a bad guy that was just about to finish off Murphy, but again Lewis is fine. The head of OmniCorp sends for Murphy's wife and son, and prematurely informs Murphy's wife that he's dead following a seizure. Murphy then shows up at the OmniCorp building. So the head of OmniCorp sends for a helicopter to take him and Murphy's wife and son away, hoping of course that Murphy will be killed before his wife sees him.

This is where Murphy battles a few ED-209s, but he prevails and gets to the roof of the OmniCorp building to discover the head of OmniCorp, his wife and his son there. The head of OmniCorp and Murphy shoot each other, but Murphy's shot is more accurate and the head of OmniCorp is killed. At the end of the film we see Murphy being lowered into a new RoboCop suit and then walking off with his wife and son.

There are things I haven't even mentioned yet. Like the annoying TV presenter guy that Samuel L. Jackson plays. Again, it's not very relevant to the film. And I for one am a little bit sick of seeing Samuel L. Jackson turn up in every bloody film going. Gary Oldman does a good enough job playing the lab guy, but we're not exactly talking stellar performances here, Murphy and his wife are both very wooden.

This film isn't a patch on the original. Currently on IMDb it has a score of 6.7 out of 10, and even that seems too high to me. You can call me a fanboy of the original film and to be honest, that's probably fair. I was 13 when RoboCop came out and I got it on video that Christmas. I was just at the right age for it to blow my mind. And it did. They didn't have to remake RoboCop, and they shouldn't have. But seeing as it was inevitable that they did, they should've gone for the violence, action and blood fest of the original, and not changed stuff just for the sake of changing it. People my age would've gone to see it, to hopefully have their minds blown again. And the kids would've watched it when it came to DVD anyway. And a new 18 certificate RoboCop would've had a much more lasting impact on them too I suspect.

But as it stands we have this rather weak remake. A remake that 27 years from now won't hold up anywhere near as well as the original film has. Do yourself a favour. Take the money you would've spent seeing this and go buy yourself the original instead. It's awesome. And yes, I am biased. As for RoboCop 2014? I'm sorry, but I wouldn't buy it. Not even for a dollar.