LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

ANY MOVIE obsessed with '70s and '80s pop tunes has a lot to overcome. ``Cherish,'' sadly, is overcome by its soundtrack.

Not always too whimsical for its own good (but enough to do harm), this strange hybrid of crime thriller, quirky character study, third-rate romance and female empowerment fantasy never really finds the tonal or thematic glue it needs. The basic premise has potential: How does an innocent young woman under house arrest keep from going stir crazy, and what is her smitten jailer going to do about it. It somehow gets sidelined by distracting supporting characters, utterly unconvincing detective antics and too many Human League interludes.

As a showcase for the talented, winsome and underappreciated (since ``The Craft'') Robin Tunney, ``Cherish'' is a frustrating love letter. Cast as one of those pretty ugly girls who only needs a makeover and an attitude adjustment to bloom into the swan we recognize from the start, Tunney shows off a variety of looks and many degrees of physical prowess. But at the end of the day, her character, Zoe Adler, proves even less persuasive than her climactic, Sigourney-Weaver-channels-Nancy-Drew escapades do.

No fault of the actress, who knows a juicy opportunity when she gets one and throws herself into the piece with active wit and evident relish. Writer-director Finn Taylor (``Dream With the Fishes'') just doesn't entirely know what he's doing, and he's trying to do too much.

Frizzy-haired Zoe is a San Francisco animator whose gnawing loneliness manifests in social ineptitude, babblesome speech patterns and a love life of one-night stands and zero return calls. Or does it? Zoe has a mysterious stalker, and what he sees is a much more together girl.

But the probably real Zoe (she has her own, tiresome, music vid-informed fantasies) follows her typical loser trajectory when the stalker tries to kidnap her, but only succeeds in ramming her car into a cop. The latter is killed, the stalker escapes, and Zoe is charged with drunken vehicular manslaughter.

She's warehoused in, well, a converted warehouse loft while awaiting trial. An electronic bracelet is clamped on her ankle, permitting her to go no farther than 50 feet from a homing modem. Bored but forced to face her own loneliness, she goes a bit nuts, but also irons out her hair and develops some semblance of self-respect. Meanwhile, the nerdy deputy Daly (Tim Blake Nelson, the doofiest of ``O Brother, Where Art Thou's'' three idiots), whose task it is to monitor Zoe, falls in love. Desperate for any attention, Zoe seconds that emotion - while manipulating Daly into helping her track down the real culprit.

Among the film's extreme side characters are Zoe's ice-cold boss, played by alternative rock queen Liz Phair (why wasn't the Hall and Oates- soaked soundtrack relieved by one of her songs?), and the gay, wheelchair- using dwarf downstairs (Ricardo Gil), who becomes Zoe's only friend and, sometimes, her biggest problem. Jason Priestley lampoons his fading ``90210'' image as a potential dream date.

Throughout the movie, Zoe tries to outsmart her electronic warden and widen her sphere of existence. When this works at all, it is usually just temporarily and is even then freighted with discouragement. That, too, is how writer-director Taylor works out some of his scenarios - the central love story whimpers, Zoe's final stage of development seems as imaginary as her earlier dreams, and so forth. It all makes a kind of thematic sense, but it doesn't make for the kind of fun, genre-bending film ``Cherish'' so evidently strives to be.

CHERISH - Two and one half stars

(Rated R: language, violence, sex, substance abuse)

Starring: Robin Tunney, Tim Blake Nelson, Brad Hunt, Ricardo Gil, Liz Phair, Nora Dunn.

Director: Finn Taylor.

Running time: 1 hr. 40 min.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Monica, Santa Monica.