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.
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