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| Prince is a gigolo who is up to no good... |
Release Date: July 2, 1986. Running Time: 100 minutes. Screenplay: Becky Johnston. Producer: Robert Cavallo, Joseph Ruffalo, Steven Fargnoli. Director: Prince.
THE PLOT:
Christopher Tracy (Prince) works as a restaurant piano player on the French Riviera, but his true vocation is gigolo. He entertains wealthy older women, while his friend Tricky (Jerome Benton) makes sure they don't have to pay rent by sleeping with their pretty landlord (Emmanuelle Sallet).
Christopher has been enjoying a flirtation with Mrs. Wellington (Francesca Annis), but now he's ready to move on to a final score. Reading in the newspaper that heiress Mary (Kristin Scott Thomas) is about to inherit a $50 million trust fund, Christopher decides to seduce her and marry her for her money.
The plan is upended when Christopher develops actual feelings for his intended victim, creating a rift with Tricky. Meanwhile, Mary's father Isaac (Steven Berkoff) has observed Christopher's interest, and he determines to use any means to keep this man away from his daughter - even murder!
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| Christopher (Prince) and his partner Tricky (Jerome Benton) charm a beautiful heiress (Kristin Scott Thomas). |
CHARACTERS:
Christopher: "I do nothing professionally; I only do things for fun." Prince is basically playing Prince, which is both a bad thing and a good one. He's an utterly bizarre presence, campily preening about in outfits that would make Liberace tell him to tone it down, and viewers could be forgiven for wondering whether he and Tricky are the real couple here... particularly when an early scene sees him slipping on a carpet only for Tricky to catch him in an old-school Hollywood romantic embrace. Still, I would still argue against Prince's Worst Actor Razzie. For better or worse, he is a distinctive screen presence, even when he's falling on his face - and his sheer strangeness ensures that he isn't dull to watch.
Mary: Kristin Scott Thomas's motion picture debut is also likely her worst performance, though I doubt anyone could have made much of this incoherent character. Mary is introduced being flamboyant and defiant at her birthday party, but then spends the rest of the movie being alternately meek (with her father) or prudish and snobbish (with Prince). She and Prince spend the first half of the movie acting as if they detest each other; then, in the space of a single musical number, she's suddenly hopelessly in love with him. The hatred is more convincing than the romance; whatever the opposite of screen chemistry is, that's what these two have.
Tricky: Jerome Benton, as Prince's boyfriend... er, totally platonic friend and partner in crime, somehow "won" the Worst Supporting Actor Razzie, even though his performance is perfectly fine. His comic timing is actually pretty decent, doing much to make some of the early scenes watchable and even amusing. He may fail to sell an emotional scene later on - but given how poorly written the scene in question is, I'm not sure that anyone could have. Overall, I'd label his Razzie win as yet another case of the Razzies' ongoing inability to recognize that a movie can be bad without the actors actually being bad in it.
Mrs. Wellington: Francesca Annis lights up the screen as Prince's playful paramour. She's basically the female counterpart to him: entirely self-aware as she engages in shallow affairs, and proud in declaring that her purpose in life is to have fun. It's a shame she wasn't the female lead, as Mrs. Wellington seems like a far more natural match for Christopher than Mary does, and Francesca Annis even manages screen chemistry with Prince. Sadly, she all but disappears after the halfway mark, returning only for a too-brief scene near the end.
Isaac: Perpetual '80s baddie Steven Berkoff plays the villain of the piece, in his second successive "Worst Picture" winner. Berkoff was actually a last-minute replacement for the great Terence Stamp, who quit two weeks into the chaotic production. Too bad: Stamp might have brought some depth, or at least some convincing menace. Instead, Isaac becomes a typical Berkoff baddie: vain, homicidally jealous, and possessing not a single redeeming quality. Berkoff doesn't really have to act; he just sets his expression to "sneer" and leaves it there for the full length of the picture.
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| Mary's father (Steven Berkoff). The tilted camera is to tell you he's evil. Well... along with being played by Steven Berkoff. |
"SO... EXACTLY WHAT WERE THEY ON?":
Pretty much the entire film falls into this category. We open with narration that flat-out tells us how the story's going to end, lest we accidentally find anything suspenseful. Prince and Mary meet at her birthday party, which is introduced with a parade that includes live elephants. Had the Genie from Aladdin floated down and begun singing Prince Ali, it wouldn't have seemed the least bit out of place. Mary is first shown flashing her birthday crowd from a balcony before descending to dance around in nothing but a towel... only to, immediately after, begin behaving like a complete prude.
When Prince and Mary finally consummate their relationship, they do so surrounded by enough lit candles to constitute a legitimate fire hazard. One assumes they made love very carefully, as enthusiasm or any sideways movement would result in immediate immolation. Also, for reasons he likely took to the grave, Prince the Director decides to superimpose the image of the two making love onto a close-up of Prince the Actor's hand.
Oh, and it's heavily hinted that Prince and Tricky have a three-way with their pretty French landlady (Emmanuelle Sallet) after she threatens to kick them out on the street in a bizarre, unfunny, unsexy scene that never plays into anything else in the "plot." In fairness, in Prince World, such goings on probably just meant it was Thursday.
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| Prince sings. The movie definitely needed more of this. |
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
I have to admit to sometimes enjoying this movie's sheer goofiness. This is a film that can, and will, throw out anything at any moment. A meaningless and unmotivated shot of a piano on a hilltop? Sure! Elephants? You bet! An impromptu ghetto blaster serenade in the middle of a fancy restaurant, with Prince dancing atop a presumably very expensive piano? Why not! It's a romantic comedy thriller in which the romance is unconvincing, most of the comedy is unfunny, and the suspense is nonexistent... and yet in its sheer weirdness, it intermittently sucked me in, particularly in the first half.
As a director, Prince shows an ability to manage crowd scenes, maintaining a sense of activity without losing sight of the major characters. As a musician, he was at the height of his creativity during this period, so it's little surprise that the soundtrack is good. Also, while I have no idea why the movie is in black-and-white, I have to admit that the images are often striking.
OTHER MUSINGS
Under the Cherry Moon was Prince's follow-up to the surprise smash, Purple Rain. Purple Rain was a vanity piece; but in a rare and amazing occurrence, it managed to also be a good movie. A fictionalized semi-biography of Prince starring Prince, it delivered exactly what his fans wanted: lots and lots of music - mostly really good music.
Under the Cherry Moon is also a vanity piece... but this time, Prince directs as well as stars, which likely doomed any chance of its threadbare story working. His role is mostly a non-singing one, with fans of his music being served a single, too-brief number at the midpoint and another (downright bizarre) one against the end credits. A lot of Prince music is heard on the soundtrack, but the music is mostly backgrounded, leaving only his amateurish acting in a trite story with bad dialogue and unsympathetic characters.
With its black-and-white photography, sometimes jagged editing, and sharp tone changes, this resembles nothing so much as a European art film. One of those art films that goes really, badly wrong. The script has all the wit, complexity, and thematic depth of a 13 year old's Twilight fanfic. The only attempt made to say anything comes via some vague and shallow mumblings about class conflict, with Mary at multiple points referring to Christopher as a "peasant." I emphasize that this is not a period piece; a twentyish woman in the 1980s is presented calling people "peasants," with zero trace of irony.
For about half its run, the film sort of engages in its oddball messiness, with even the bad dialogue sometimes amusing in its stiltedness. Then, around the midpoint, the plot takes over... at which point all entertainment value gurgles noisily down the drain. The second half is a chore to get through. By the time the plot reaches the very endpoint that the opening told us was coming, most viewers will be eager for it to be done and over with.
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| Mrs. Wellington (Francesca Annis). Easily the most appealing character... but over 30, so not the female lead. |
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
Under the Cherry Moon was the joint Worst Picture Winner for 1986, alonside the more notorious Howard the Duck. The other nominees were: Blue City, an ill-advised attempt to graft the Brat Pack formula onto a Ross MacDonald thriller; Cobra, a Sylvester Stallone vehicle that probably gives a fair approximation of how Beverly Hills Cop would have turned out had Stallone not dropped out; and Shanghai Surprise, a Madonna flick, which I haven't seen but which I feel confident is poor.
Given that this was the year of Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, I wonder how it was excluded from the list of nominees. Still, of the nominees, I think it's likely that Under the Cherry Moon deserved the award that it got.
OVERALL:
Though it's enjoyably bizarre for a while, Under the Cherry Moon gradually sinks under the weight of its trite storyline. Prince the Director has no sense of pacing, and Prince the Actor has no screen chemistry with co-star Kristin Scott Thomas.
The movie does have a few fun moments, largely in spite of itself, and it's certainly pretty to look at. Still, it gets steadily worse as it goes along; and in the end, all but die-hard Prince fans are likely to be bored, or baffled, or - most likely - a bit of both.
Rating: Turkey.
Joint Worst Picture Winner with: Howard the Duck
Worst Picture: 1985 - Rambo: First Blood, Part II
Worst Picture: 1987 - Leonard, Part 6
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