Metacritic Film

Cherish

Starring Robin Tunney, Tim Blake Nelson, Brad Hunt, Liz Phair, Jason Priestley, Nora Dunn, Lindsay Crouse, and Ricardo Gil

MPAA RATING: R for language

Fine Line Features
Suspense/Thriller
99 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters June 7, 2002

A fantasy-prone young woman confronts a life-altering reality when she is placed in a house arrest program. (Fine Line Features)

WRITTEN BY
Finn Taylor

DIRECTED BY
Finn Taylor

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

51 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 San Francisco Chronicle
A film of real beauty, which is surprising, since it's not a movie of beautiful sentiments or settings.
75 Philadelphia Inquirer
Tunney, brimming with coltish, neurotic energy, holds the screen like a true star. She brings the role, and the movie, to life.
75 Chicago Sun-Times
A lightweight charmer with a winning performance by Robin Tunney.
75 New York Post
Endearingly offbeat romantic comedy with a great meet-cute gimmick.
70 Wall Street Journal
I paid steadfast attention, both to the actress, a performer of unusual versatility, and to the character she plays, a caged -- and cagey -- bird who sings because she's too stubborn to cry.
70 LA Weekly
May be scant on character and plot development, but it’s rich with affection for daydream believers
67 Entertainment Weekly
Disoriented but occasionally disarming saga packed with moments out of an ''Alice in Wonderland'' adventure, a stalker thriller, and a condensed season of TV's ''Big Brother.''
63 Boston Globe
The cast is up to the challenges of that arc, but the plot doesn't always keep them afloat.
63 Chicago Tribune
An uneven mix of genres that, even when it misses the mark, gets points for originality and a good beat.
60 Washington Post
The movie's about its own playfulness. But that playfulness, all too often, feels labored.
60 Variety
Good performances and quirky humor make this slick if less than fully satisfying mix of romantic comedy and mystery an easy sit.
50 The New York Times
As a poky little character comedy, Cherish is enchanting in a small-scale way. But when Mr. Taylor tries to turn it into a genre thriller, Cherish deteriorates so quickly that it's unsettling -- but probably not in the way Mr. Taylor intended.
50 Washington Post
This is a downbeat, indulgent and self-consciously quirky little movie.
50 The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Though it is shaped as a woman-in-peril thriller about obsession, Cherish is about being winningly kooky, not violently insane.
50 Miami Herald
Seems to vanish from memory even as you're watching it. The movie is an exercise in minimalist storytelling.
50 The Onion (A.V. Club)
In the end, it becomes the cinematic equivalent of one of the songs Tunney adores: enjoyable enough while it lasts, but so thin that its ingratiating charms seem as much a source of frustration as pleasure.
50 Film Threat Chad Bixby
Slightly less than lovable. It’s a strained romantic comedy that starts promisingly, takes a hard left turn and slowly falls apart.
50 New York Daily News
As it is, while Tunney is undeniably lovely to look at, she's just not that much fun to be around. And for 100 minutes, she's all we've got.
50 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Finn Taylor's lark of a movie feels like two unfinished films awkwardly fused together and ever threatening to snap apart.
50 New Times (L.A.)
Their (Tunney and Nelson) interplay is what saves the movie, and possibly should have been expanded upon to the exclusion of the other plot points.
40 Austin Chronicle
The soundtrack is a boisterous blast from the past, and there's a quiet pleasure to watching Zoe and Daly let their composure loose like scrambled eggs, but there's little else to hold dear here.
40 TV Guide
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.
30 Los Angeles Times
Implausible at every turn, it offers a dab of quirkiness and edge from writer-director Finn Taylor, but otherwise has nothing for audiences to embrace.
25 Charlotte Observer
The movie's weirdness isn't organic; it's imposed, like barber-pole stripes painted on a prison wall.
20 Village Voice
The only flicker of thematic interest -- AM radio obsession as psychopathology -- is duly subsumed into a sea of desperate soundtrack come-ons.

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