Poor Sherry. It's bad enough that she's a semi-recovering junkie struggling to regain the trust of her family and the custody of her small child. Did she really need the further indignity of having her movie upstaged by Olivier Assayas' superficially similar Clean, which premiered at Cannes in 2004 but for some reason took two full years to turn up in American theaters? With our memories so fresh, critics and audiences alike will be hard-pressed to evaluate Maggie Gyllenhaal's ferocious performance in Sherrybaby's title role without being distracted by faint echoes of Maggie Cheung's cooler, less Method-y depiction of the arduous climb upwards from rock bottom. And while little-known actor Brad William Henke (Me and You and Everyone We Know) makes a vivid impression as Sherry's exasperated brother, whose conditional love bears the asbestos lining of someone determined never to be burned again, I think even he would admit that he's no Nick Nolte. (Who among us is?)
Even without the burden of a more illustrious predecessor, though, Sherrybaby would still seem awfully familiar. Written and directed by Laurie Collyer, whose only previous film is the documentary Nuyorican Dream, this determined downer follows the Sundance template to a fault, which means that its gritty, button-pushing realism (Sherry has no compunction about using her body to achieve her short-sighted goals, and Gyllenhaal likewise has no compunction about flinging her clothes off) winds up undermined by dramatic convention (we're ultimately given a pat explanation — the standard-issue abuse excuse — for her aberrant behavior). On a moment-to-moment basis, there's nothing particularly wrong with Sherrybaby; it's just a harrowing slog down an unpleasant road that we've already traveled numerous times. That it nonetheless remains compulsively watchable is thanks to Gyllenhaal, who inhabits Sherry's brittle fragility as if neediness were a newly discovered emotion. That said, I for one don't ever need to hear her sing onscreen again. Billy Joel's "Honesty" (warbled in Happy Endings) and the Bangles' "Eternal Flame" (performed a cappella at the dinner table here, to intentionally excruciating effect) are sufficient for one career. — Mike D'Angelo
