Dear Penthouse Forum: I was just an innocent 18-year-old blonde when my boyfriend mentioned I should take my clothes off and pose for pictures for money. Little did I know that it would be the very first step in an exciting career as a professional actress who takes her clothes off and has sex on camera for money.
“About Cherry,” a “Boogie Nights” for the hopelessly naive, stars Ashley Hinshaw as the infrequently clothed girl who dumps her boyfriend, moves to San Francisco with a hapless platonic friend (Dev Patel) and gets a job at a strip bar where she meets an art-appreciating lawyer who introduces her to the world of galleries and swanky parties. He (James Franco) turns out to be less useful, however, than a lesbian porn director (Heather Graham) who is fighting with her girlfriend and takes young Cherry under her tender wing as the star of her latest film.
Earnest directing and a banal script about Cherry’s alleged self-actualization try to add some substance to the proceedings, but to no avail. This is just a slow-moving skin flick broken up by lots of boring discussions about Cherry’s future.