Cherries 41 Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  3/8/2006

The Little Details

Running Time: 87 min.

Production Date: 3 / 1 / 2005

Director: None credited

Cast: Mandy, Anita Blue, Sydney, Carrie, Sabrina, and some guys

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: I haven’t seen anything from this series, but Xplor / Homegrown hasn’t impressed me much with the little I’ve seen from them. I can’t get too excited about this one.

Initial Reaction: It’s more pro-am than amateur, and far from good amateur.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody wanting fresh talent

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody wanting the chemistry that goes with real amateur porn

The Technical Stuff

Audio /Video Quality: The technical aspects are a little below average. The audio is pretty well balanced, but there are quite a few background noises. The video is clear and free of shadows, but there’s a lot of camera motion. It’s enough camera motion that my head hurt before the movie was even half done. Normally when I review amateur and homemade releases I make a disclaimer about the people not having the technical skills or equipment to do a good job. Here it just seems like they don’t care enough to do a good job.

Music: None

Disc Complaints: The authoring on the DVD leaves plenty to be desired. There are a few chapter breaks through each scene, which is nice, but there’s also a different title for each chapter on the DVD. This makes navigating around the DVD much more difficult, and just comes across as poorly done authoring.

Menus: The main menu pretty much wraps all the regular menu choices around a chapter menu where you can choose a scene based on a small clip of each scene.

The Feature

Cherries apparently collects scenes of girls getting fucked on camera for the first time. Sometimes there’s a little tease and interview to start things out, and sometimes it just gets right to the action. Regardless, you never really get to see the guy and there’s plenty of shaky camera work.

Scene 1 - Mandy and a guy

Mandy, a cute twenty one year old girl with a bit of ethnicity to her, starts out her scene a bit shy talking about liking to get fucked from behind. The camera guy joins her on the bed and helps her strip off her jeans so he can play with her hairy pussy. After fingering her a bit he adds a little tongue for Mandy’s twat. He even fingers her ass a bit while eating her before letting her suck his cock. Mandy mixes up some slow and fast cocksucking, and lays back to let the guy fuck her missionary style while still wearing her black bra and panties. He has her strip down to show off a great natural rack before letting her turn over to take it from behind like she likes. Mandy goes back and forth between getting fucked on her back and all fours, and finishes things up on her knees taking a great facial.

This is a pretty hot scene. The guy is a bit annoying, but Mandy’s darn cute. She also has a very natural sexuality that comes across extremely well and gives the scene a heck of a lot of scene. Mandy is a hot little thing and turns out a great scene. The guy holds it back a little, but not enough to keep this from being a hot scene.

Scene 2 - Anita Blue and a guy

Anita is a decent looking twenty year old bottle blonde who’s fresh into LA from Vermont. She shows off the black panties under her black skirt as well as pulling up her white top to show a nice natural rack. She lets the guy play with her pussy a little as she plays to the camera before he pulls down his pants to show a nice sized cock. Anita drops down to suck it while staring at the camera before climbing up to ride it cowgirl style. She turns around for a little reverse cowgirl and sucks the cock clean before bending over to take it doggie style. Finally, she strips off her shirt and gets down to take a facial finish with her eyes about as tight as they can get and a fairly distasteful look on her face. She reacts even worse when she gets a taste of it, and then claims she liked it while wiping it up.

This scene didn’t do a lot for me. Right away Anita gave me a dirty feeling. Sadly, it was more of the “I’ve been living in an alley for the last couple nights” type of dirty rather than the “Please shoot your hot cum up my cornhole” type of dirty. She seems to get into the scene pretty well at times, but she plays to the camera badly enough at other times that I just couldn’t get into this one. This scene just didn’t cut it.

Scene 3 - Sydney and a guy

Sydney is a hot redhead who starts out her scene in a dark spaghetti strap top and jeans lying back on the bed. She strips off her jeans to show a cute pair of pink panties and lets the camera guy run his hands around her shapely legs. She quickly slides a rubber onto the guy before sucking his cock and then lies back so they can both play with her shaved pussy to get her ready. The guy quickly moves in to start fucking her missionary style, and has her drop her top to show what appear to be a decently augmented pair of titties. Sydney is encouraged to make some noise, so she moans unconvincingly while often staring into space. They keep it up through doggie before Sydney has him pop on her tits.

Watching this scene, I couldn’t help but think of the title of that chick book that came out a while ago with a title that went something like “Face It, He’s Just Not That Into You”. The guy in this scene really needs to read that book, as it might help him to make scenes better than this. Sydney’s cute, but I’m not quite sure who was more bored with this scene, me or Sydney. I think she was somewhat into the sex, but the guy trying to coax her into being more vocal for the camera was annoying as heck and held the scene back horribly. Sydney seemed somewhat annoyed with him throughout the movie, and more than anything seemed to just be in it for the money by the end of it. This scene didn’t do much of anything for me.

Scene 4 - Carrie and a guy

Carrie’s a cute Oriental who starts off in a cream colored top with a pale blue skirt and panties talking about getting into porn on a whim and sex while showing off a great natural body. She lies back to fuck herself with a standard white dildo before letting the cameraman play with her pussy briefly. Carrie rewards him with a bit of knob gobbling, and doesn’t hesitate to take it all into her mouth. She strokes it a bit before moving up to ride it in both cowgirls, and makes sure to suck her juices off it a few times while riding it. Finally, Carrie sucks the guy to a pop in her mouth that she swallows without showing off.

This is a pretty good scene. Carrie is cute, and shows some great spunk right from the start. She looks like she wants to have fun, and isn’t afraid to smile through the scene. She keeps a bouncy feeling the entire time, and makes this a fun scene to watch. Unfortunately, the camera seems unable to show much other than closeups, and combined with the motion the scene was very hard to watch. Carrie has the potential to turn out a great scene. I really hope she finds somebody who can do it with her.

Scene 5 - Sabrina

Sandy haired Sabrina starts her scene out stripping out of some of her cheerleader outfit and knocking her pom poms aside to play with her pussy. She starts out using just her fingers and then goes to work on it with a vibrator. Finally, she works herself to a nice orgasm.

This is an okay scene. Sabrina is cute, and she seems to get into her play quite well. That said, this scene died under its own weight. It lasts nearly eighteen minutes with the camera wandering all over the place. I’ve cursed Ed “Ewwwww” Powers and his tripod many a times, but Ed showed himself to have more cinematic skill here than whoever the guy on too much cough syrup behind the camera was here. This isn’t a bad scene, but it’s far from great.

Cherries 41 leaves plenty to be desired. Yes, the girls are fresh, but the scenes rarely capture the spark that makes an amateur scene great. I’ve watched plenty of amateur and homemade movies, and this just doesn’t come close to any of it. I also have a hard time considering this an amateur series as the guys seem to be pros who are just not that good at their job. Carrie and Mandy easily turn out the best scenes, while the guy all but kills Sydney’s. If you want some fresh talent that you’re not used to watching, go check out some of what’s available for homemade porn from Shot at Home or go out to the suburbs with housewives and buxom women with Kandi Peach Productions. Although there might be a couple fairly tasty cherries in Cherries 41, most of it barely made it to the average mark.

The Extra Stuff

Trailers are kind of included for other releases. It’s about fifteen minutes of action with boxcovers flashing by. The only reason I made it more than thirty seconds into this pile of crap was that I was taking notes and couldn’t reach the remote. There’s also a blooper reel, a bonus scene, and weblinks.

The blooper reel lasts fifteen minutes. It starts with a bit of extra footage and screwing around on the set of Eye Contact 19. It moves on with a Latino threesome, a few bloopers, and even a guy jerking himself off into his mouth. Sometimes you’re told where the sequences come from, but most times you’re not. You never really know what’s going to happen next here, and that’s not quite the complement it should be. There’s plenty of what goes wrong on a porn set, and although I’m sure that most of it is supposed to be amusing, I rarely had more than a chuckle here. I was also disappointed that none of the footage came from this feature. The biggest disappointment of all was that it’s the same blooper reel that’s been on every other Homegrown release that I know of. Normally a blooper reel would add to the extras rating of the DVD, but when Homegrown is using the same reel here that they used on releases from two years ago, it just feels like shit.

The bonus scene features Claudine and comes from Homegrown Video #648. Claudine is a nice looking brunette who appears to be a few years past the legal age. You might notice that this bonus scene doesn’t get the intro like I give most every other scene out there. That’s because I’m not sure this even qualifies as a bonus scene. It doesn’t quite last five minutes and is completely hacked up to get that short. I might have made it a minute into this piece of crap before moving past it just because I was curious to see if somebody was actually stupid enough to hack up a scene that short. Yes they were.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: Straight, amateur, toys, and masturbation

Raincoat Factor: High

Condom Usage: For the partners of Mandy and Sydney

The Bottom Line:

Currently, many of Xplor’s DVDs can be found online for between about $12 and $25 with stores everywhere in between. Don’t even think of paying that much before renting this one. There’s a couple good scenes, but nothing about this release is really good. The technical aspects feel sloppy, and the extras are recycled and hacked apart from other releases. This is a pretty sucky DVD.

Note to Xplor / Homegrown: Extras are a good thing, but hacking things apart and using the same ones for two years isn’t going to impress anybody! Also, amateur movies don’t have the best technical aspects, but they rarely feel that way because the person didn’t seem to care about their product like you do. I really have no clue how you’ve stayed around as long as you have.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight