Sherrybaby (2006)

Excellent and understated movie with a powerful message

This was a fascinating movie, with a first-rate performance by actress Maggie Gyllenhaal as an ex-con on parole, a woman trying to pick up the pieces of her life, including a daughter who has been raised in her absence by her brother and sister-in-law.


Sherry returns to the free world after spending years in prison, and she acts as if she's only been gone for a week. The core of the movie centers on her troubled relationship with her five-year-old daughter. I think there are a lot of women who will find something they can understand and relate to in this character, even though most of us have never lived this kind of a life. May 16, 2008

"Tell me you love me..."

Sherrybaby starring the extraordinary Maggie Gyllenhaal is difficult to watch but it made a lasting impression on me. Gyllenhaal's fearless and childlike performance is what makes this film worth seeing, she plays Sherry who has been released from prison and is trying to rebuild her relationship with her young daughter. Her daughter is living with her brother Bobby and his wife and Sherry wants to do right for her daughter but obstacles and old habits creep back up again. This film isn't perfect and the ending isn't cut and dry but Sherrybaby doesn't sugarcoat or preach, it's raw and seething. February 11, 2008

Gyllenhaal is astounding

Sherrybaby, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a good film, but prepare to be rather depressed for a bit after seeing it. When we first meet Sherry Swanson (Gyllenhaal), she has recently been released from jail, where she served time for a drug-related robbery. Once she's released, she contacts her brother, Bobby, who has been keeping her child (Alexis) for her while she's been in the clink. The movie then follows Sherry as she tries to stay clean and put her life back together post-prison.

Gyllenhaal is AMAZING in this film. Really amazing. (I am a fan since The Secretary, but this cements it.) If anyone has any doubts as to whether she can act, this should answer them. The storyline is a downer, though, as nothing seems to go right for Sherry. The tension between her and her brother over the fate of the child, the vestiges of an abusive relationship with her father, her struggles with addiction, her desperate need to be loved - it all adds up to rather morose entertainment.

But it is charged with meaning and blessed with good performances, making it worth seeing in my book. FYI - there is LOTS of language and nudity.
December 29, 2007

Maggie Gyllenhaal's acting is a gem, the film is not...

After seeing this movie uncut on cable, while I am a big fan of Maggie, and while her performance is second to none, overall, this is one of her films I'd rather not see a second time, so I couldn't honestly advise anyone to buy this DVD without checking it out first. It's a film I'm glad I saw at least once since I am a Maggie fan, but it is really a totally depressing experience on a number of levels throughout, the script needed major rewrites, especially as to believability issues, the ending is all wrong and contradicts the whole movie, and there really was no call to more or less exploit Maggie's beauty here in needlessly graphic sexual encounters and nudity, in way too many such scenes. She agreed to such to make the film, I suppose, so who am I to judge? Still, her acting talents are enough to do without the "soft-porn" and those several segments only detract from the viewer's finding of some empathy and understanding of her character.

The movie, one of many Gyllenhaal has been in these days, is compelling enough to sway one from fast forwarding, but aside from the excessive nudity/sex, there are just too many negatives here for me to imagine anyone actually wanting to repeatedly watch this, let alone buy the DVD which has few extras and seems not to have even put in closed-captions, which is unacceptable in these days.

Gyllenhaal's character is interesting, but it's never really background, explained enough with her story starting somewhere in the middle and never really explores the roots of same, except for too subtle and brief references throughout the film, none of which add much to the overall experience. There are too many unanswered questions all along the way, which could've been easily incorporated into the mix with perhaps some flashback sequences, or at the very least, more exposition which would make our understanding and sympathy for who we're apparently supposed to be pulling for, Sherrybaby, much more rewarding. An off-screen narration could've easily solved this problem as well, but such is nowhere to be found.

On one hand, we are asked to identify with Sherry, and her state of mind, but her behavior contradicts her deepest held wishes, and there are just too many unbelievable characters and situations surrounding her, to make the whole into something the viewer can identify with. Until the very end, which seems tacked on as a shallow "happy ending" but which comes out of nowhere (maybe they ran out of film or the production company out of money to give this a decent finish), Sherry is not only not likeable, but is obviously living in some selfish, drug/alcohol fantasyland, which only serves to hurt her young daughter, even moreso than she already has when we meet up with her. While the movie deals with her attempted reconciliation and reconnection with her "baby," aside from the little girl's equally powerful performance, surrounding characters all seem quite unlikely and undeveloped, and for a film which attempts to be a slice of "real" life, perhaps the makers of this should've spent a little more time developing those "supporting" characters. For most, if not all of them, are dealt short shift here in the writing, and eventually detract from the film's seeming potentials.

Hints are given along the way which suggest that Sherry's childhood and early adult experiences led and lead to her self-destructive nature, but it would've been nice to see a more believable and detailed explanation. This would've obviously necessitated less Maggie screen time, and more from her supporting cast, and made less of her amazing performance, but in this case, it is really needed. By the end of this movie, which presented some sort of revelation in Maggie's character, both inner and behavior-wise, for the good, it felt unrealistic and was most unsatisfying.

I can't help but to think that this would've been so much better with at least just a little bit less sex and nudity, and at least just a little bit more of basic character development. The film asks us to identify with Sherrybaby but mostly, she is a mess even after being released from prison for silly drug "law" reasons, and her prayerful longing to just reconnect with her most loved thing in life, her daughter, would've never happened in the real world we live in. Let alone the fictional world this film portrays.

Any movie in this genre primarily demands as its first and foremost tenet, that we CARE about the main character we're SUPPOSED to care about, but Gyllenhaal's "Sherry" never comes close to that. By the film's soapy, sappy end, that needed quality never really materialized. At least, this viewer didn't care at the finish whether she ever got close to her daughter or not. In fact, all I came away from it with was the feeling that she was an unfit "mommy" from giving birth to way beyond the phony ending. All I could empathize with were her psychologically abused daughter, and her brother and his wife, and I would've liked to see a more "tough love" solution, and a restraining order till Sherry ever got her act together.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is a great actress, and her performance is superb, but she needs to concentrate more on selecting better material, and quality over quantity in the projects she agrees to in the future. The excessive sex and nudity was also and remains beneath her plain old acting talents at this stage in her career. Her genuine beauty and amazing ability to brilliantly capture the essence of any character she's ever played, should be enough by now (and hopefully in the future), to garner less exploitive roles, where she doesn't seem to need to shed her clothes without necessity, several times in a film, where doing such seems to eventually damage her overall talents and prospects for better films. As well as subtract from the audience's feeling of empathy and compassion for whatever character she's playing. Especially such as Sherrybaby.

I didn't like "Sherry" from beginning to end, and I find it hard to believe anyone would, given the weak material and her character's past and present abuse of her supposedly loved child. Again, this would've been a lot better with a lot of rewrites and more careful thought about audience identification as a driving force in overall believability and enjoyment of a film that is just too much of a downer for me to ever recommend actually buying this for anyone except a Maggie Gyllenhaal collector. October 1, 2007

Gyllenhaal, Trejo and the rest drive this raw story

A stellar performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal and a pretty great one from Danny Trejo, with a rawness that affects the struggles of a young junkie-ex-con-mother attempting to make something good of her life.
Without going into details SherryBaby worked for me because I found myself viscerally reacting to each character and debating and discussing with my girlfriend the implications of the character's behaviors. That stands as a mark of an affecting and effective story.
A remarkable performance from Gyllenhaal, and the best thing I've seen Trejo do ever, plus terrific acting from the supporting actors. September 13, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...