Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Charlie's Angels just want to have fun, and they don't care how low they stoop.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 2, 2000
Bad movies are better when they realize what junk they are. There's something charming about watching a movie willfully embrace your worst notions of what it would turn out to be.
Charlie's Angels is that kind of guilty pleasure. It's everything you expect a remake of a cheesy '70s TV show to be, and less. Nobody minds looking foolish on the screen, so there's no reason to feel that way for mildly enjoying it, either.
The movie is essentially a combustible lingerie party for three attractive movie stars flaunting their best physical attributes. Drew Barrymore's chest, Cameron Diaz's derriere and Lucy Liu's legs are the real stars, upstaging everything around them, even Bill Murray. Anyone who howled at Coyote Ugly's sex-is-power feminism will surely take umbrage.
But, you know what? Nobody involved with Charlie's Angels cares. They don't even know what umbrage means. This movie revels in being dumb. Not clever dumb or even sensible dumb. Just dumb. You've got to respect that, when so many bad movies try to pass themselves off as important.
These girls just wanna have fun and don't care how low they stoop, or what that posture might reveal. Charlie's Angels is sexier than the TV series could ever sneak past network censors, with louder violence and sleek direction by a music-video veteran known as McG. It also tips the balance of sexual politics in favor of its pin-up fantasy women, who control every situation and man except, of course, Charlie.
John Forsythe's fatherly voice returns as Charlie, an intercom mentor for the sexy sleuths. His latest crew is a wilder bunch than Jaclyn, Cheryl, Kate, even Farrah. Barrymore is Dylan, a spunky punk. Diaz is the ditzy blond Natalie, and Liu, as Alex, adds diversity with her dominatrix demeanor. Each is a martial arts expert who could give Jackie Chan fits, with an endless array of undercover-appropriate costumes and double entendres.
Their assignment is to recover a kidnapped computer genius (Sam Rockwell), an idea going nowhere, so a software piracy plot takes over. None of it matters, since Charlie's Angels only requires a sketchy reason to lead from one fight or flirtation to the next. Just sit back and admire the view.
Some action sequences are fairly impressive, starting with a Bondian free-fall from an airliner having nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Dylan's disposal of a gang of ruffians while bound to a chair is smartly devised, and every brawl is exciting with those slo-mo Matrix-style tricks borrowed by McG.
When things aren't blowin' up real good, Charlie's Angels is a Maxim photo spread in motion. Barrymore gets the most provocative poses, in a pit-crew uniform zipped down to her navel or coyly hiding nude behind a beach float. Diaz gets two booty-shaking showcases during morning aerobics and a senseless detour into a taping of Soul Train. Liu dons skin-tight leather for a computer training seminar that should get her downloaded a few thousand times.
Murray keep his clothes on and his anarchic humor in check as Bosley, the Angels' go-between with Charlie. It's a thankless role, distracting the camera from jiggle entertainment for a few moments, and you can sense Murray chafing under the circumstances. Matt LeBlanc, Luke Wilson and Barrymore's fiance, Tom Green, appear briefly as boy-toys left hanging while dangerous work is done.
McG occasionally strikes the proper note of parody, like the way a slow-motion flip of an Angel's hair becomes a drop-dead weapon. Or the way certain shots resemble those old freeze-frame finales on TV. The movie has a nice idea of what keeps viewers coming back to Charlie's Angels on nostalgia networks, and how silly the formerly cool can be. Just not enough to be a good movie, and sometimes that's not so bad.
Grade: C
Director: McG
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Bill Murray, Kelly Lynch, Sam Rockwell, voice of John Forsythe
Screenplay: Ryan Rowe, Ed Solomon, John August
Rating: PG-13; violence, sexual situations, mild profanity
Running time: 93 min.