cherry pop movie review

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A bawdy, uproarious comedy about a newcomer's wild night in a down-and-out drag club. Starring Caldwell Tidicue (Bob The Drag Queen), Tempest DuJour, Detox, Mayhem Miller and Latrice Royale. A bawdy, uproarious comedy about a newcomer's wild night in a down-and-out drag club. Starring Caldwell Tidicue (Bob The Drag Queen), Tempest DuJour, Detox, Mayhem Miller and Latrice Royale. A bawdy, uproarious comedy about a newcomer's wild night in a down-and-out drag club. Starring Caldwell Tidicue (Bob The Drag Queen), Tempest DuJour, Detox, Mayhem Miller and Latrice Royale.

• Assaad Yacoub
• Toccara Jones
• Jared Carlson
• 26 User reviews
• 2 Critic reviews
• 4 wins & 5 nominations

• Terry's Wife
• The Bouncer

• Blanqueesha
• (as Mayhem Miller)

• White Chocolate

• Kitten Withawhip

• (as Allusia Alusia)

• (as Tempest DuJour)
• (as Misty Violet)

• Ariella's Mom

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• Trivia Caldwell Tidicue plays a character named "Kitten Withawhip", which was his drag name when he first started performing. He later changed it to Bob the Drag Queen.

Kitten Withawhip : You are worse than Halle Berry in Catwoman!

• Connections References Kazaam (1996)
• Soundtracks I Can't Afford It Written and Performed by Wendy Jo Smith (as Wendy Ho) Courtesy of QweenHo Records

User reviews 26

• harryneeleyjr
• Jan 7, 2018
• How long is Cherry Pop? Powered by Alexa
• September 22, 2017 (United States)
• United States
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• Runtime 1 hour 19 minutes

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Meet The Director Behind ‘Cherry Pop,’ A Drag Queen-Starring Movie

Pop the cherry with Assaad Yacoub

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. The way to a drag queen's heart is through vodka. Or at least that's what Assaad Yacoub, director of the delightful new movie Cherry Pop , says helped him get RuPaul's Drag Race 's Bob the Drag Queen and Detox Icunt among many other prominent drag queens to star in his first feature film. "I basically stalked them at bars and where they would be performing," the 26-year-old says. "I was sneaky. I would go to bars and be like, ‘Have a shot.’ I would then beg them to be in the movie. Most of my cast, the story they say is: ‘We met Assaad outside at a bar, and he offered us a vodka shot.’" It worked, and they agreed, if only because "they wanted me to leave them alone."

That would explain how Yacoub first got Bob to star in the original Cherry Pop , his student film and New York Film Academy thesis on which the feature film is based, years prior. "That short film did really well in the festival circuit [when it came out]. We won quite a bit of awards at big festivals. Because of that, I got the opportunity to pitch the feature film." 

If you're surprised that a then-film student got talent of such caliber to participate in his thesis, you've never met Yacoub. With energy comparable only to a larger-than-life cartoon character, his enthusiasm is contagious and his curiosity for the unknown insatiable; in fact, he was inspired to do a movie about a failing drag queen show after seeing a drag performance for the first time in college. "I’d never seen drag queens before moving to New York; I grew up in Dubai, where there are no drag queens. I went to a drag show, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, these performers are so interesting, why aren’t they portrayed on TV more?’" says the Lebanese-born, currently L.A.-based Yacoub. He adds:

I got to become friends with them in New York, and I got to see the glamour that they portrayed on stage—they were so perfect. Then backstage, there was all this drama. And once you become friends with them is the only time you can see it. So I was like, "People need to see this. It’s like two different people." I don’t think any of the drag movies out there really show a day in the life of a drag queen. This is an honest look at one night at a drag show that’s pretty much close to reality.

Employing a first-person perspective of the protagonist "Cherry" (played by Norway's Lars Berge, who, fun fact, donned drag for the first time on the set of this movie), who's about to perform at a drag show for the first time as a means to make his dreams of performing come true, Cherry Pop peels back the curtains of the behind the scenes world of drag. When the star of the show Lady Zaza (Tempest DuJour) refuses to come out of her dressing room for her final performance after her partner passes away, mayhem and hilarity ensue among the rest of the performers, with lots of catty one-liners, miles-long fake lashes, several wig changes, and vomit. Bob—who Yacoub since directed in his "Purse First" video and Lux De Ville handbag commercials—reprises the role of Kitten Withawhip, the host of the show and the "voice of reason" amongst all the glitter and bitch slaps. 

"I think it's so cool that Bob was the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race and he stayed humble and continues to promote the careers of others, including me. He stayed exactly the same as he was before the show," says Yacoub of his frequent collaborator and friend. "Working with him is such a joy because he brings such a unique view to the character. He’s also so much fun to work with. He brought that energy, and the other actors fed off of it and worked harder to live up to Bob’s energy."

As an extension of Yacoub's larger-than-life personality and vibrant subject matter, the movie is an explosion of color, sounds, and movement, with freeze frame shots introducing the characters and their backstories—a nod to Mean Girls , a movie that Yacoub describes as having cult status that he hopes one day to achieve with Cherry Pop . "I think now is the right time to do [a mainstream movie about drag queens], with RuPaul having won an Emmy and an MTV Movie and TV Award for RuPaul’s Drag Race ," he says. "I think people just didn’t have the funding to do a movie like that. They’re like, ‘A drag movie isn’t going to make money.’ As an independent filmmaker, you need to stay afloat, so you’re not going to make a movie that isn’t going to bring in revenue. Now is the right time where drag fans are going to bring in the revenue for a movie like that, I think."

After filming the short film at NYC's iconic Stonewall Inn, Yacoub built the entire set from scratch in a warehouse in L.A. when it came time to film the feature. "It was kind of cool that we got to shoot a drag movie in such an historic gay bar, but for a feature, it’s not feasible," he says. What he didn't anticipate was a nearby train that would frequently interrupt filming of the scenes. "It got to the point where every time a train came by, we would take a shot," he says. "One day, there was a train every 15 minutes. It was horrible. I was so upset, and Detox and Mayhem kept on taking shots, and I was like, 'They are never going to remember their lines.' But Mayhem didn't know her lines ever, so it was fine [ laughs ]." It's those moments that added to some of the funniest improvised lines, according to the cast, and made for some memorable and laugh-out-loud post-credit scenes.

Aside from getting a glimpse into what happens backstage at a drag show, Yacoub wants to spread a message of acceptance in the current political climate. "Each character in the movie has to go through a form of acceptance, whether it’s a mother accepting her son being gay or the matriarch figure accepting that she is aging and has to move on with her career," he says. He adds: 

I think that’s what I want people to get from it—you have to accept someone no matter what they are, and you have to accept yourself. It’s an important message because a lot of people are doubting themselves and they don’t know what to do, and they’re hearing negative things in the media about who they are. No, you should stick up for yourself and be proud of who you are. I hope people can look at the characters and be like, "If they can accept themselves, I can accept myself, too."

And there was no better place to spread this message than at Monday's Cherry Pop New York premiere, held as part of NewFest's OutCinema (an LGBT film festival) and NYC Pride. "It's so cool that I am coming back full-circle. This is where Cherry Pop started, so it’s cool that we get to come and screen here for Pride," he says. "I can’t wait for the fans to see it. Now is the right time to go out and support the LGBT community more than ever."

You can catch a screening of  Cherry Pop  on  July 10 at  Outfest Los Angeles  and at the  Castro Theater in San Francisco  on July 11, before the movie comes out on VOD in fall. 

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‘Cherry’ Review: A Very Different Tangled Web for Tom Holland

Joe and Anthony Russo, the M.C.U. filmmaking brothers, stretch out into the real world of war, crime and addiction in a gritty drama based on a best-selling novel.

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By Glenn Kenny

A couple of years back, when Martin Scorsese dared to say he didn’t care for superhero movies — “that’s not cinema,” he said — two successful directors in that field, the brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, took a swipe at the older filmmaker. “At the end of the day, what do we know?” Joe said in an interview . “We’re just two guys from Cleveland, Ohio, and ‘cinema’ is a New York word.”

Yet, from the evidence of their latest movie, “Cherry,” the Russos seem interested in making something akin to Scorsese cinema. A song by Van Morrison, a Scorsese favorite, plays over this movie’s opening credits, and other Morrison songs adorn its soundtrack. The protagonist is introduced as a young, alienated, fast-walking white man with a close-cropped haircut and a gun. Drug addiction figures in the action, and the action is often captured with involved camerawork. Hmm.

Adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by Nico Walker, “Cherry” follows its title character (Tom Holland) from a collegiate romantic obsession to his time as a soldier in Iraq and a bank robber feeding the opioid monkey on his back. “I’m 23 years old, and I still don’t understand what people do,” Cherry says in voice-over early on.

Whether they’re comfortable owning up to it or not, the Russos are better moviemakers than their Marvel movies (the most recent of which was the gargantuan hit “Avengers: Endgame” ) allow them to be. They demonstrate that here. Holland, also a veteran of the superhero mode of cinema (he’s Spider-Man these days) shows performing chops that web-slinging doesn’t often let him flex.

Being “two guys from Cleveland” works to the filmmakers’ advantage, as at least some of the home-front action is set and was shot in Cleveland Heights . The Russos understand the territory and shoot it knowingly, only rarely indulging in the Hollywood tendency to fetishize abandoned heartland American factories.

They do less well when Cherry enters basic training: The directors change the aspect ratio and, in essence, offer up a condensed remake of the first third of Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”

The Iraq sequences are more impressive. The sere, desolate chaos of military maneuvers is well conveyed, as is the confusion of Cherry’s character.

Eventually “Cherry” breaks free enough of its influences to present a credible, at times harrowing, American addiction tragedy. Ciara Bravo, as Cherry’s girlfriend, wife and eventual partner in junkie-dom, is at times the performer who has the strongest emotional hold on the viewer, and the most memorable find here.

Cherry Rated R for language and violence. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. In theaters and on Apple TV+ March 12. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

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Cherry Pop (2017)

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Currently you are able to watch "Cherry Pop" streaming on Amazon Prime Video or for free with ads on The Roku Channel, Amazon Prime Video with Ads. It is also possible to rent "Cherry Pop" on Amazon Video, Vudu, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube online and to download it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play Movies, YouTube.

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Cherry Pop is 25532 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 26450 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Wild Orchid II: Two Shades of Blue but less popular than Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles.

When Zaza, headliner of a weekly drag show, 'CHERRY POP', refuses to come out of her dressing room, all hell breaks loose backstage. A young newcomer, The Cherry, is hiding a huge secret from the girls while getting ready for his debut performance.

Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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Cherry review – taking the 'post' out of post-traumatic stress disorder

Tom Holland brings his A-game to the true story of an army veteran drawn into a life of heroin addiction and bank robbery

T he Russo brothers , Anthony and Joe, have become renowned for directing the epics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and now they take on the big, serious, operatically painful story of Cherry, about a US army medic played by Tom Holland who leaves the service in 2007 with PTSD after witnessing horrors in Iraq. He acquires an opioid addiction that blossoms into a full-scale smack habit, miserably shared with his young wife Emily (Ciara Bravo), and finally finds a new trade in robbing banks, like a zombie wired on desperation. The Russos produce and direct, and screenwriters Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg have adapted the bestselling autobiographical novel by the decorated war veteran and ex-convict Nico Walker about his own desolate experiences in Civvy Street, robbing banks to feed his habit.

Holland is a fierce, compact presence, his jaw muscles perennially working: he is a sweetly innocent young guy who falls for fellow college student Emily and one afternoon makes a fatally premature decision to tell her he loves her. Instead of hearing “I love you” back, Emily is scared by the gesture, pulls away from him and in angry despair at what turns out to be a temporary break-up Cherry irreversibly signs on the dotted line to join the army. Everything follows from that.

The movie is divided into self-consciously weighty and epic chapters, but really it splits into two parts, war and postwar: Cherry’s military career in Iraq, in which he is both brutalised and brutalising, and then the grim nightmare of his civilian life which makes it clear that the “post” in post-traumatic stress disorder is wrong. His is a life of continuing trauma, continuing stress and continuing disorder.

This is a vehement, heartfelt film that culminates in a colossally grandiose sequence with a full-scale overhead camera shot (the sort mocked in Team America: World Police) and Puccini blaring on the soundtrack. Holland certainly brings his A-game. At various times, he reminded me of Jake Gyllenhaal as the stoic grunt in Sam Mendes’s Jarhead and the smack addict Heath Ledger in Neil Armfield’s underrated heroin drama Candy . But Emily’s story is skated over and the film is rounded off a little too easily into a straightforward redemption story (its mood tacitly absorbing the happy ending of the publishing and movie deals) with no permanent price paid.

There is the bleakest kind of chaotic humour in the bank robberies themselves – and it’s a reminder that apart from the Avengers movies, the Russo brothers also directed episodes of the TV comedy Arrested Development. Jack Reynor has a great supporting role as the loathsome drug dealer nicknamed Pills’n’Coke, familiarly known as “Pills”, who becomes Cherry’s longterm supplier and even his sort-of friend, although friendships are impossible in the soulless world of drug addiction. Pills finds himself being roped into being a getaway driver and then bank robber himself alongside Cherry, with terrible consequences which show us just how much Pills is really esteemed by his new non-friends.

What is very interesting about the robberies here is that they show that in the moment-by-moment confrontation with the bank teller, there is a kind of negotiation, or bargaining. The teller might decide to offer a single wad of cash, but the gun-brandishing robber might angrily demand another wad before making a run for it – and all the time the clock is running down; the robber fears the police arriving and the teller fears being shot. It is a game of chicken in which the robber always loses in the end. Cherry is a fervent movie, corn-fed with drama and action, but maybe a little less than the sum of its parts.

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‘Cherry’: Tom Holland Feels Stranded in the Russo Brothers’ ‘Great American Movie’

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Joe and Anthony Russo’s Cherry has its moments. But the film, an adaptation of Nico Walker’s hit 2018 novel of the same name, is, for the most part, a misfire and a missed opportunity. The Russo brothers, best known of late for helming a spate of Avengers epics — most recently 2019’s Endgame — bought the rights to Walker’s autobiographical bestseller within months of its release , for reasons anyone who’s familiar with the novel or its backstory can easily guess. 

Cherry — Walker’s novel — is a topically wide-ranging, tonally flexible, semi-autobiographical story that was written, at the encouragement of an independent publisher , while Walker was serving time in prison. How he got there has itself been the subject of much fascination; it’s also the story that Walker’s novel fictionalizes. From 2005 to 2006, he served as an Army medic in Iraq, going on more than 250 combat missions. He came home and fell into a desperate rut of opiate addiction. To fund his habit, he robbed 10 banks around Cleveland in a span of four months, beginning in December 2010. He was arrested in April 2011, pleaded guilty in 2012, and was given an 11-year sentence. In 2013, while Walker was behind bars in the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky, Buzzfeed published a profile summarizing all of the above — the public notice that caught a publisher’s eye. In 2018: the novel. In 2021: the movie, now streaming on AppleTV+ . 

A whirlwind, in other words. And an opportunity for a filmmaker to depict a robust, eventful narrative from almost every side. The story, with all its sticky interaction between real life, novelization, and the ensuing publicity of it all, practically begs for self-awareness. And filmmakers like the Russos, with their roots in shows like Arrested Development and Community , have — the movie proves — noticed exactly this, and capitalized on it. You can’t really begrudge the pair for taking this particular leap, succumbing to the itch to remind us that they’re good for more than making mega-million superhero movies. The danger is that the movie legitimatizes the inevitable rejoinder: Are they? 

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Cherry , which stars Tom Holland as the titular college kid-turned-Army medic-turned-opiate addict-turned-serial bank robber (the film doesn’t track the turn to bestselling author ), is a knowingly segmented, compartmentalized worm of a movie, slithering through its drama with a Look at me! fervor that undermines what might have been good about it. Tell someone you’re making a film that combines a youthful romance, a bloody war story (up through and including the traumatized aftermath), opiate addiction, a streak of bank robberies, and a prison sentence into one film-length narrative and they’ll likely tell you you’re doing too much, it’s too many things at once, it isn’t realistic. The backstory assuages those doubts with tidy conclusiveness. Not only is all of it grounded in reality, it’s of the moment. Iraq, the opiate epidemic, a brooding sense of financial crisis. Short of police violence and #MeToo, it’s got all the makings of being America: The Movie , told middle-America style, which is to say — from the vantage of Hollywood — insincerely. 

It’s all a trap. Watching Cherry is like watching the Russos get set up by their own set-up. Because each one of these threads, these periods of Cherry’s life, is not only at risk of being condescended to, fashioned into a scuzzy “hot topic”; each is also, dangerously, a distinct, viable genre of movie. And the Russos make the error of leaning into the genre-ness of it all, with a knowing self-awareness that reveals itself to know very little, in fact. The war section is a war movie , a practical ode to the likes of Kubrick, but with none of cynicism toward precisely this approach that copping that auteur’s style should probably demand. The drug movie is the saccharine afterbirth of legendary movies like The Panic in Needle Park : all substance abuse, yet stripped of the substance. 

The movie is so overbearingly high on its own fizzy, clever stylishness that it strands the heart of its own story. And it strands otherwise interesting actors, like Holland, Ciara Bravo (as Emily, Cherry’s sweetheart), and Jack Reynor (as Pills and Coke, whose name speaks for itself). It isn’t that Holland, in particular, doesn’t have the goods. Maybe he doesn’t; I suspect he does. But Cherry doesn’t give him a chance to make a strong case for himself either way. It keeps getting in the way. The movie’s mélange of genres and tones are so lazily overt that Holland can’t help but come off as a little too green, too implausible, to be the strand holding so many of the filmmakers’ whims together. Isn’t this story, in itself, enough of a challenge? Holland comes off less as a promising young actor stepping up to the plate of a titanic, wide-ranging role than like something goofier — Peter Parker trying on big boy pants. Holland is better than that. Whether he’s cut out for what this role demands remains to be seen, but might have been more evident in a movie which — even if we kept the Russos overarching concept intact — dialed back the zealousness and gave Holland room to breathe. What’s missing is the sense that any of the Russo’s tools — the shifting aspect ratios, the script’s unjustified assaults on the fourth wall, the emphatically zany drug use, the emphatically BOOMING war scenes — are being deployed in service of something greater than, “See?” Holland emerges as merely one more tool in their kit, as overwhelmed and poorly used as the rest.

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Walker’s novel was a son of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son , to say nothing of where it fits in the scheme of growing literature about America’s 21st-century wars, so much of which has tried to define what the American war novel can even look like post-Vietnam . Any power or truth in that context, let alone Walker’s novel — let alone the severity of the additional touch points, like opiate addiction — has been abandoned by the movie. It gets vomited onto the screen with grim, unprocessed opportunism. Cherry feels less directed than brandished , thrust in our faces as if its makers have some point to prove — about themselves. The film’s one searing moment — a catastrophic moral climax in which Cherry is forced, under circumstances of his own making, to choose between taking a man to the hospital or letting him die — evinces the gravity of this error. So much of what this story is about, so much of why it matters, comes down to the tragedy of that choice, the ugly desperation of it, the long throughline that runs from war trauma, to the traumas of returning home and lacking care, to insecurities of class and identity, the seeming evaporation of options, that can beset a man like Cherry. Sure, other Iraq veterans can (and have) fared better. This man has not. In a story full of low points and regret, this scene — low on hyperactivity, high on sentiment — capably depicts something close to rock bottom. It is not a flawless scene. But it feels as close to honest as the film gets. Unfettered from any real wrangling with the movie’s ideas, yes, but sincere in its gravity. 

That honesty cannot be allowed to last. There are more tricks to deploy, more skills to impress upon us. There’s a whole ending to completely botch; the Russos are nothing if not committed to the bit. And so: Cherry’s 10-plus-year prison stint, which concludes the film, gets sweepingly summarized in a wordless, cloying, pan-tastic montage that bypasses all detail, all character, all sense of what is ultimately, time-wise and perhaps even spiritually, the most substantial chunk of Cherry’s life. Given their infelicity with so much else on display in Walker’s story, maybe we’re better off not seeing what the Russos might have done with the “prison movie” chapter of that story. But of all the things to minimize — this? The long arc of directorial self-satisfaction bends toward, not justice, but easy redemption. It’s as if the Russos are conceding the already-obvious. We never promised you the story of a life . All that really mattered was the freak show. 

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Some women sell their bodies out of need. Some because they like the money or the independence. Angelina, the 18-year-old subject of "About Cherry," is the first I've encountered who does it out of absentmindedness and a vague narcissism. Here is a movie that suggests prostitution is something that just sort of happens to you, like Lyme disease.

Angelina ( Ashley Hinshaw ) is a Long Beach teenager who lives unhappily with an alcoholic mother ( Lili Taylor ) and works in a Laundromat, doing (ding! plot point!) other people's dirty laundry. Her boyfriend, a drummer in a rock band, suggests she can pick up a few hundred bucks by posing for nude photos. Fun fact: Boyfriends in rock bands are almost always drummers, because it's easier for them to make eye contact than the other musicians.

Angelina takes the job, loses her laundry and seems about as affected as if a friend had snapped her with an iPhone. When the boyfriend sees the photos and is disturbed, she leaves Long Beach and travels to San Francisco with her BFF Andrew ( Dev Patel ), who she keeps around as sort of a mascot. She pets him, feeds him and lets him sleep in her bed. Some might find this a cruel sexual temptation. I suspect Angelina is so dim-witted, she doesn't notice when she's nude, and it never occurs to her that Andrew may have a crush.

In San Francisco, we follow her up, or down, the ladder of the porn industry, as she progresses passively from nude to girl-girl to boy-girl. The money gets better. It doesn't occur to her that she has become a prostitute. She has sex with strangers for money, but protests "this is my job." A wise old man in London named Henry Togna once suggested to me that his neighbor, the Duchess of Duke Street, among her many other accomplishments, ran a bordello. "Henry!" his wife protested. "You make her sound like a madam!" His reply: "Sex for cash, m'dear. That's my definition."

Angelina, now known professionally as Cherry, begins to work with Margaret ( Heather Graham ), a lesbian director who takes one look at her through the viewfinder and experiences true lust. You may remember Heather Graham as Roller Girl in " Boogie Nights ." It's heartening to see that she has had such professional success.

In a sex club, Angelina meets a slick-taking lawyer named Francis ( James Franco ), who seems sort of nice until he turns her on to cocaine. The introduction of drugs is usually a crucial turning point in such stories, driving the heroine into degradation. In Angelina's case, she seems to like cocaine well enough, but it doesn't seem to make much of an impression. Here is a girl who needs to pay more attention.

There is a subplot you'll miss if you blink. Margaret has a girlfriend of several years named Jillian (Diane Farr), who grows jealous of Angelina, throws a tantrum and walks out. This event has no emotional weight. None of the romantic liaisons convey any conviction — save perhaps poor Andrew's celibate crush on Angelina, which now drives him to masturbate while looking at her hard-core videos. She walks in on him while he's doing that, explodes in anger and screams: "You love me — just not enough to jerk off to somebody else!"

Now this is a line of dialogue that needs a profound book written about it. Would she be less jealous if he had been watching porn starring somebody else? Why? Given her line of work, shouldn't she be complimented that with all the porn out there, he chose her? Angelina seems to be disconnected from her body, her self, her work and its consequences. That's one reason "About Cherry" is such an oddly passive and distant film. If this poor sap of a girl has no other reason to sell herself, shouldn't she at least care about the money? She doesn't even seem to notice it much, except that it grows larger.

Prostitution can be a fascinating occupation, allowing personal and financial independence and the kind of entre into the lives of strangers ordinarily available only to doctors, police officers, clergymen and psychiatrists. Prostitutes have inspired some of the most unforgettable characters in fiction. As for all of its effect on Angelina, she might as well have saved herself the wear and tear and stayed in the laundry.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

About Cherry (2012)

Rated Unrated for sexual content, including nudity, language and some drug material

102 minutes

Ashley Hinshaw as Angelina

Heather Graham as Margaret

Lili Taylor as Phyllis

James Franco as Francis

Dev Patel as Andrew

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'Conan O'Brien Must Go' is side-splitting evidence of life beyond late night TV

Eric Deggans

Conan O'Brien dresses as a Viking in Norway. Conaco/Max hide caption

Conan O'Brien dresses as a Viking in Norway.

To be honest, when I first heard Conan O'Brien was ending his TV talk show in 2021, I assumed news that he might turn to variety shows and online programs to continue his career was some combination of face-saving and wishful thinking.

But after watching the four episodes of his new Max series Conan O'Brien Must Go , it's now obvious — even to a thickheaded critic like me — that leaving late night TV really was liberating for O'Brien. He's leveraged his unique sensibility into several different podcasts, a deal with Sirius XM , specials featuring other stand-up comics and now this travel series for Max — which resembles jokey specials he did for cable channel TBS back in the day.

And as the late night TV genre crumbles under sagging viewership and the decline of traditional media, O'Brien's renaissance also provides an example for the future — where fertile comedy minds and talented performers can spread their work over a much larger canvas.

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Is conan o'brien the best 'hot ones' guest ever discuss., learning a lesson from 'hot ones'.

O'Brien already made a splash recently with his brilliantly maniacal appearance on the interview-while-eating-hot-wings show Hot Ones , slobbering over hot sauces while claiming, as he was checked over by a fake doctor, that "I'm fine! I'm perfectly f*****g fine!"

This is the place where O'Brien shines — he's called it "this strange phantom intersection between smart and stupid" — and it's on full, freakish, super silly display in every episode of Conan O'Brien Must Go .

The conceit of the show is pretty simple. O'Brien heads overseas to visit average folks in Norway, Argentina, Thailand and Ireland who had once Zoomed in to speak with him on the podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan . Sometimes the visits seem like a surprise — he catches one aspiring Norwegian rapper in shorts and Crocs after popping up on his doorstep — and others seem a bit more planned, including his visit to a radio show with about four listeners in Buenos Aires.

Each episode begins with a solemn monologue which sounds like it is delivered by the film world's most eccentric voice, German filmmaker and actor Werner Herzog (he's not credited in the show and when asked, a publicist at Max shared a quote from O'Brien: "I can neither confirm nor deny the voice in question.")

The torturous accent by "Herzog" makes every line sound absurdly hilarious, describing O'Brien as "the defiler ... with dull, tiny eyes ... the eyes of a crudely painted doll ... he scavenges in distant lands, uninvited, fueled by a bottomless hunger for recognition and the occasional selfie."

Now that's smart. And oh so stupid.

A funhouse mirror version of a travel show

O'Brien performs onstage with a fan in Norway Conaco/Max hide caption

O'Brien performs onstage with a fan in Norway

Fans of O'Brien's Conan Without Borders specials on TBS already know what his style is when he tackles a travel show — throwing himself into outrageous reactions and situations while working his quirky brand of improvised conversations with hapless bystanders.

In the Max series Conan O'Brien Must Go , that includes O'Brien offering screechy vocals onstage during a performance of a Norwegian emo/rap band. Or asking provocative questions of a couple therapist/sex expert. Or getting beat up in a "fight" with a 10-year-old boy in a bar.

It's all an excuse for O'Brien to unleash his energetic wit, taste for silly absurdity and skill at drawing laughs from sympathetic — if often befuddled — strangers. Whether you enjoy this special will depend on how you feel about O'Brien's style, which can feel a bit like the world's best class clown doing everything possible to make you crack a smile.

(Rent a family in Norway so they can say goodbye when he gets on a SeaCraft? Check. Get local artists to paint a mural of O'Brien, a soccer star and The Pope on the side of a building in Argentina? Double check.)

'Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend' Is A Joke Name For A Podcast — Sort Of

But what amazes in a larger sense is how O'Brien has turned his sensibility into a comedy brand to fuel work on many different platforms. And, at age 60, with more than 30 years as a comedy star, he's been released from the shackles of any genre to shine wherever he chooses — whether it's an episode of Hot Ones or a streaming service which sometimes looks like a collision between True Detective and 90 Day Fiancé .

Leaving late night TV as late night left him

I'm old enough that I started covering TV not long after O'Brien made his first move from the shadows of life as a comedy writer – he worked on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons — to succeed David Letterman in 1993 as host of NBC's show Late Night (now hosted by Seth Meyers). Back then, NBC gave O'Brien years to figure out the show, honing his smartly serious comedy in a way that would inspire then-teenage fans like Seth Rogen and Bill Hader .

O'Brien left NBC after a disastrous deal where the network tried to make him host of its venerated late night program The Tonight Show and also keep its former host Jay Leno at the network. He moved to a late night show on TBS in 2010, but even then, there was a sense that his creativity was a bit hemmed in by the format.

After 28 Quirky Years, Conan O'Brien Is Leaving Late Night

By the time he left his TBS show Conan for good, it seemed O'Brien was already caught in a trend which would hobble other late night shows — as young viewers consumed his content online and ratings on cable dropped.

Now, with a podcast and digital media company worth many millions and growing status as a TV comedy legend still willing to do almost anything for a laugh, O'Brien is proving there is a successful life beyond late night.

Particularly, if you have the talent to play the fool while leaving little doubt you're also the smartest person in the room.

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‘Trap’ Trailer: M. Night Shyamalan’s New Thriller Casts Josh Hartnett as a Serial Killer at a Pop Star’s Concert

Warner Bros. has released the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan ‘s latest mystery thriller “ Trap ,” starring Josh Hartnett, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills and Marnie McPhail.

According to the official logline, “Trap” follows a “father and teen daughter attending a pop concert, where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event.” The film’s first look was screened at this year’s CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

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Shyamalan also spoke about casting Hartnett, who has recently made a return to acting by appearing in “Black Mirror” and “Oppenheimer.” Shyamalan said he works outside of Hollywood conventions, making films in a “small, reasonable” way. He noted, “What I’m looking for is someone that’s willing to just let go completely, give themselves over like a play to the movie and leap, leap, leap — don’t protect yourself. That beautiful electricity that requires the right actor at the right time in their life. And that’s where Josh was when when I when I met him.” Shyamalan continued, “It was just a feeling of the right person at the right time. It’s so beautiful when you happen artists that are right place that man it was so like, we just I just had the most wonderful time working with him.”

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Jerry Seinfeld on "Unfrosted," the made-up origin tale of Pop-Tarts

By Mo Rocca

Updated on: April 15, 2024 / 10:30 AM EDT / CBS News

It started with a stand-up bit, from Jerry Seinfeld's Netflix special, "23 Hours to Kill": "When they invented the Pop-Tart, the back of my head blew right off!"

And like all good comedy, it was based in truth. In 1964, when the Pop-Tart was introduced, 10-year-old Jerry Seinfeld fell hard.

Asked if he had a favorite flavor from the start, Seinfeld replied, "Brown sugar cinnamon, obviously."

"I'm surprised that it took them that long to add frosting," said Rocca. "It was two or three years."

"Why? You think that's obvious, frosting?"

"Well, they look a little drab to me when they're not frosted."

"You're a tough audience!" laughed Seinfeld. "I thought they were absolutely sensational instantly. But I did not know – and my parents did not know – these things are not food!"

It should come as little surprise that the man who headlined a sitcom about nothing has managed to build a whole movie out of that routine. His new Netflix film "Unfrosted" is a mostly made-up origin story of the processed food favorite.

Seinfeld said, "The real story that we started with (and I think it's the only real thing in the movie) is that Post came up with this idea, Kellogg's heard about it very late, and decided to try and catch up."

To watch a trailer for "Unfrosted" click on the video player below:

"Sunday Morning" contributor Jim Gaffigan plays Edsel Kellogg. When Seinfeld asked him to sign on, he was there: "I would never bet against Jerry Seinfeld," he said. "You know, sometimes comedians can be funny for a decade, or maybe a decade or two, but Jerry seems to have transcended, you know, four, five decades now."

In addition to writing and acting, Seinfeld stepped behind the camera for the first time, as a director. "I thought, what would be the least work?" he said. "The least work is for me to just tell the actor how to say it, instead of me telling the director, and then the director telling the actor."

Casting, he said, "was so much fun. And Hugh Grant [who plays a certain tiger] was the guy who made the movie." 

Seinfeld called on a bunch of his comedian friends, from Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy to Sarah Cooper

Asked what surprised her about Seinfeld as a director, Cooper replied, "He was very specific with what he wanted. There was a moment where Tom Lennon had to do this line where he had to do this, 'Voila!' And he did a take. And then Jerry came over and adjusted his hands just slightly. And everybody's like, 'How is that making it better?' But then he did it, and it actually was better!"

"I'm precise," Seinfeld said. "But for my thing, and what I do, I have to be that way."

Director Seinfeld walked us through a Kellogg's-style funeral for a "taste pilot" who blew up during the creation of the Pop-Tart. (And yes, that part is made up.) "You always wanna be in very serious places in comedy, 'cause it makes it easier to be funny."

Why? "The more you're supposed to act right, when you act wrong, it's funny," he said.

He referred to himself during the funeral scene: "If you look at my face there, this is what's hard about acting and directing at the same time. I'm directing here; I'm just watching, 'Are they doing this right?' I have completely dropped my character. Luckily, I don't take my work as an actor at all seriously!"

But he did make sure the other actors felt taken care of. Cooper said, "There was actually a moment on set that I think it was the only moment I saw somebody get a little bit tense, and Jerry was just like, 'Guys, we're making a movie about a Pop-Tart!' You know, he put it all in perspective so quickly."

According to Gaffigan, the director also gave speeches that he called "pretty inspiring. He would just say, like, 'I really appreciate you guys, your contribution. This is a really exciting thing for me.' And he would speak from his heart."

Seinfeld admitted being a speechmaker: "Sure, yeah. I'm a comedian, so I'm used to talking to people in an uncomfortable situation. That's what standup is. This is a very uncomfortable situation. We're expecting to laugh; you're expecting to be funny. That's not that different from a movie set. This is all awkward. And everyone's nervous."

Since this is "Sunday Morning"'s Money Issue, we had to ask whether Kellogg's was in on the action with "Unfrosted." "Kellogg's did not have anything to do with this movie," Seinfeld said. "When you see the movie, you will understand. No company would want a movie made about their product like this!"

        For more info:

• "Unfrosted"  debuts on Netflix May 3
• Pop-Tarts (Official site)

      Story produced by Reid Orvedahl. Editor: Lauren Barnello. 

• Jerry Seinfeld

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