Charlie's Angels

Lo, in the depths of primordial television history...when T met A...there was "Charlie's Angels." Now, the TV show has been resurrected in cinematic form, to teach a whole new generation of boys that it's okay to watch stacked females gambol and cavort as long as there's a nice thick veneer of empowerment covering their jiggling extremities. Of course, "Charlie's Angels" is execrable as filmmaking, but the total absence of any coherence, wittiness or intelligent direction functions much as it does in vintage Arnold Schwarzenegger films: it keeps the focus on bombs, stupid yet memorable one-liners, bruising fights, and the eventual triumph of the good people over the evil people. And, in this case, boobs and butts. Acres and acres of boobs and butts.

Liberating for women? Who's to say? Does kicking ass in outfits tighter than sausage casings liberate women? But action fans, especially male action fans, will find much to hold their interest.

Whether by devious design or happy accident, the people who made "Charlie's Angels" crafted a film with a plot so purposeless and incomprehensible that no one will even try to follow it. (Barrymore, who helped produce the film, insisted that crafting the script be a collaborative process, which is probably why it sounds like something four drunk high school kids wrote while trying to figure out what to do with a video camera.) So let's not concern ourselves with it. What we're looking for is style, not substance. What do we get?

Good stuff first. Cameron Diaz as bimbonic Natalie is fabulous. Diaz plays Natalie as a woman whose momentary lapses into stupidity are offset by her irrepressible joy in life and kicking ass. Even when she goes lethal on Kelly Lynch, the brightness in her manner lights up the screen. Diaz pulls off a particularly dangerous maneuver when she dances to "Baby Got Back" on Soul Train — not a particularly wise maneuver for someone with Diaz's lack of rear acreage — and manages to win over the crowd (and the audience) with sheer dopey enthusiasm, even while doing such dated dances as the Robot.

Lucy Liu as snarly Alex is also worth the price of several admissions. Liu seems to play bitchy, gorgeous comic figures as a specialty now, and she outdoes herself here with her biting deliveries of brisk derision. Liu even makes stupid double-entendres seem vaguely amusing. A scene where she seduces the nerdy engineers at a software corporation with dominatrix manner and a skirt slit up to wherever is priceless. Yet Liu is the best fighter of the three, as well, and it is only in her eyes where we can see that combination of determination, poise and raw anger which informs our best action stars. Liu deserves her own film pronto.

But, alas, much of the film works against the transcendent contributions of these two broads-at-arms. The most prominent culprit is Barrymore, as toughie-with-heart-of-gold Dylan. Barrymore suffers from produceritis, a terrible disease in which actors who hold some sort of sway in production get too much screen time. Barrymore is the least attractive Angel, physically and ass-kickingly, and she spends much more time than the other two in romantic entanglements and ass-whomping challenges. It is annoying. When Barrymore does her Schwarzenegger imitation, which is almost word-for-word a parody of one of the best scenes from "True Lies," she sounds less like a lethal lady than someone who is happy that she got to write this cool fight and these cool lines for herself. Ech.

Direction comes courtesy of McG, noted for his Gap commercials and music videos, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from that curriculum vitae: lots of flash, cool angles on the Angels, aeratedly stylish fights, and no moment goes by "unenhanced," whether by the relentlessly non-up-to-date soundtrack (we all love "The Humpty Dance," but come on) or by some sort of computer trickery. Because every moment is equally important to McG, of course, nothing sticks in the audience's mind. However, McG should be commended for his ability to let humor blossom and for his decision to hire the brother of the guy who did "The Matrix" to choreograph the fight scenes, which are pretty cool.

"Charlie's Angels" is the kind of film which is enjoyable to watch and yet completely, immediately forgettable. Only one thing resonates in your mind after you watch it: This movie really, really wants to please you. It has car chases and explosions and self-parodies and repartee (of a sort) and cool fights and exotic, revealing outfits and all its pounds stacked in the right places on its starlets. It does not have them in any particular order, or for any particular purpose, but they're all there. "Charlie's Angels" is a mess, but in its completely nonsensical way, it's quite a fun ride.

There was originally a humorous paean to Lucy Liu at the end of this review. I am not including it here. The time of my unslakable crush has passed.

Action Movies Home

Movie Reviews Home

Spam-O-Matic Home