Cherry Pop (2017)

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A laughfest from beginning to end. Great silly performances by all. Lars Berge was very effective and perfectly acted as the straight guy who wants to really sing in drag just so he can perform in front of an audience.He manages to finally get accepted into the gang. Loved it.

Whose brilliant idea was it to make a movie about drag but make it about a straight guy doing drag for the first time (and effortlessly beating his face) while the actual drag queens are reduced to ham-fisted stereotypes? I could see glimmers of talent and the plot line is well constructed. But the final product is the pits.

Seriously, this movie features some of the best Drag Race queens in herstory but doesn't do a damn thing with them. How can a move featuring Bob The Drag Queen and Detox not be good? We get almost and a half of endless explanations of each character in freeze frame format with endless boring monologues by the "Cherry" of their background and motivations. Show us, don't tell us!Then the drag performances are over-dubbed by the same person singing each song. It was funny the first song (barely) then a complete bore by the 2nd song.I feel this movie was written for the un-charismatic lead "Cherry" to give him a springboard for his career or maybe he's partnered to the writer and they wanted to give him a starring role.Then he literally almost gay bashes the queens with his awesome straightness just because the drag queens roasted the hell out of him. What an embarrassment because you know Detox would had beat his ass in real life.Then we get to see the Cherry come out on stage and look completely awkward. Remember how Gene Hackman looked in drag in The Birdcage? This is worse.

SPOILERS! The Best performance of Ave Maria you'll hear this year.This delightfully care free film by screenwriter Nick Landa is warm and comfortable throughout. Along with its inviting cinematography this film is a fun one for those with an evening to relax and laugh - you want to visit this place, if not for its lively backstage drama. And at the height of its success, is the performance by Lars Berge, a newcomer to film, but certainly not to song. Cherry Pop is not the film you may think it is. And although it rests squarely in a dive drag bar just off and on the other side of the railroad tracks, don't let that distract you, this story is honest as it is frank in what is the 'always on going battle' between gay and straight community. The cast performance did a fabulous job, each delivering a real experience that didn't border on gay or straight stereotype – surely most everyone was in drag, but this film was full of the community that exists outside the dressing room and off the stage. The ladies-in-drag's talent off-screen translated into delivered performances, of performers, just trying to get on with their lives. Their costuming was done with taste and flamboyance, which can be missing on Main Street. For those of you, unfamiliar with stellar 'drag queens', these contributing actors in Cherry Pop make the pop that becomes this cherry. But this film isn't so much about the drag queens, and really is, much more a PFLaG convention, seen from the "P" and the "F" vantage, and not so much the LaG (which may confuse the lgbtq folk, but doubt not in Nick Landa). Nick Landa's story and his success in Cherry Pop is that he has taken the discussion full circle, where straight males and drag queens, doting mothers and frustrated sons, find some middle ground. This film is also a great love story, about lost love, current love, and love that comes and goes. But Nick Landa has presented a plausible question for all of us, as Allusia Alusia's Dellusia's fashion forward approach in her role presents. On the other hand, Nick Landa has reminded us that a dedicated partner will see us through to the end, and the love that Lars Berge's Cherry shares in music and life will see mainstream heterosexual drag films relegated to the outdated bin. The treatment the story receives by Director Assaad Yacoub is a fresh take on an old story, and the story Screenwriter Nick Landa invites you on is "an experience", and much of it will have you saying, this is a film even Ann Coulter would enjoy. 'Benedicta tu in mulieribus' – blessed art Thou among women. Cheers!