Cherrybomb

Three teenagers go on a wild weekend of drink, drugs, shop-lifting and stealing cars that quickly spins beyond their control.

There's not much in cinema more awkward or embarrassing than a film that tries to be contemporary, but misses the mark by a mile. Cherrybomb has all the hallmarks of an attempt at cool, but gets it so horribly wrong.

You can be sure that disassociating himself from Harry Potter's Ron Weasley is pretty high on Rupert Grint's list of things to do before he hits thirty. I personally enjoyed those films, but being typecast as the weedy ginger kid will do him no favours as far as his career is concerned. This, then, was one of several opportunities he has taken to show that that's not all he can do. In this instance, he could have chosen much better. 

First and foremost, the film absolutely reeks of trying too hard to be 'edgy' (though I hate the term). It's all here. The drink, the drugs, the partying, the devil-may-care attitude, the raging hormones. However, this isn't where my issues with it lie. There's also a constant recourse to cliché in both the framing of the plot and in the presentation. The obligatory club scenes (look how much fun we're having!), extreme closeups on random people and objects, scores of teenagers that appear from nowhere, onscreen graphics that show the contents of text messages being sent and received. The editing too tries to follow the Skins school of film-making and frequently comes up short. This leaves the cringe at an unbearable level for large chunks of the movie.

I can sort of see what the narrative is going for, but it never quite makes it. There appears to be little in the way of a relationship between the characters and the journeys they take, all coming out of it much the same way as they went in. As well as this, the conclusion doesn't seem to be in tune with anything else that occurs previously. It was unclear to me if this was intended as a shock tactic, or if it's just shoddy writing. 

As for the performances, Grint is by no means terrible here and gives a good account of himself, in spite of the context. Kimberley Nixon is also decent, considering the material. The pick of the bunch is Robert Sheehan, who is incidentally the only Irish actor among the three main roles to star in this, a film set in Northern Ireland. It's an odd one - he can be very irritating at times, but when he shows his vulnerability, he blows everyone else off the screen. His scenes with the superbly natural Lalor Roddy are by far the best of the movie.

The Verdict:

4/10
Spends so much time trying to be trendy that it forgets about more or less everything else. Dull and uninteresting along with huge servings of cringe. Avoid.