Charlie's Angels

Joe's Movie Review

I've seen the 70's TV show "Charlie's Angels" a few times. 
It's an enjoyable flashback to the 70's. The fun in the show 
though is the 70's style and when it is updated some of the 
campy fun is lost in translation.

Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu make up the second
worst 70's crime fighting to be reinvented in the 90's. The
first obviously being last year's reincarnation of The Mod Squad,
although not by much. The main reason this is better is because it
stars 3 very hot women wearing skin tight clothes. If this movie was 
Rated R, it might have been a four star movie.

Anyway these three chicks do some horrible fake karate, the
only one who looks sort of legitimate is Liu. We are also
expected to believe these women are chosen for their
intellect which actually offends my intellect.

They are on a case to find voice recognition program someone
has stolen that could as they say in the movie "put an end to
privacy as we know it." The three angels bumble through
questions fro the clients and announce their assignments to
everyone so they can coordinate their effort and their
wardrobes of course.

The girls go on a Mission: Impossible-type adventure 
attempting to retrieve the software, only this one is 
much easier and much stupider than anything in Mission: 
Impossible. The mission takes about 5 minutes explain 
and about 15 seconds to act out. This tough task goes 
along well with the proclamation by one of the angel's 
during the movie, "I don't know what his plan is but 
I know we can stop them." How can you stop someone from 
doing something if you don't know what they're doing.
Don't worry about details, just make sure you're wardrobe 
is tight and the thinking is as minimal as possible.

Their boss Bosley, played hysterically by Bill Murray, 
is the only saving grace in the movie. He's there 
liaison to the hyper secretive millionaire Charlie, 
that's why they're called Charlie's Angels. We meet 
Bosley in one of these annoying scenes where all the 
Angels scream in unison to a speaker so Charlie can 
hear them, of course they need to ask their dumb 
questions too.

At one point the angels and Bosley go on a stakeout.
This is one of the defining points in the film. Instead
of paying attention, 2 of them egg on the third to go
and flirt with the cute bartender, she's working with
instead of staying on her job. Leave a stakeout to flirt,
that's the way to get things done if you're from
Barbieville. Their love lives is more important then the
fate of the world. They are also supposed to be undercover, 
I thought undercover you don't want to be noticed. They all
stick out all the time. If I needed help I would call on
these angels but not for their investigating skills that 
much I can tell you.

So the rest of the movie is one badly choreographed fight
sequence after another that end up like music videos with an
inordinate amount of slow motion shots. There's also a bad
car chase sequence in that music video style. This could
have to do with the director being a music video director by
trade. Any director with only 3 letter in his name like McG
probably shouldn't be directed full length movies, although
this movie only clocks in about an hour and twenty-five
minutes longer than a music video. With all these sequences,
McG tried to be assembling a bitch version of The Matrix of
course missing the coolness or the good script. It took three
people write this film but I barely see enough effort to equal 
one person writing it.

Besides Murray, the only other enjoyable performances come
from the male bad guy and his abductee namely Crispin Glover
and Sam Rockwell respectively. Sam Rockwell shines in this
performance as a techno nerd who likes to dance. Crispin Glover is
just an ultra cool bad guy, like an English bad guy you'd see
in a Bond or Sherlock Holmes film but he's a karate expert
with a couple of toys. Everyone in the movie knows fake 
karate but he seemed to know real karate or at least act like it.

The last straw for this movie happens when Barrymore is
confronted by a bunch of bad guys and predicts her victory
then says she's gonna moonwalk out of the place. She does
some more psuedo karate then says she's moon walking but she's
just doing some dumb other dance. They can't even get the
moonwalk right. A 10 year old child could probably get the
moonwalk right. This truly annoyed me, the inattention to
script detail and the intimate detail given to the
style. A good film must mix the two together in harmony, not
overload with one or the other.

The film has a whole bunch of cameos such as Matt Leblanc
proving his acting range by portraying an actor, unlike his
Joey character on "Friends", in a movie. He's as good here
as he was in Ed, the baseball movie with the monkey. Tim
Curry has a role as a major suspect in the case. LL Cool J has
a little cameo and Tom Green tries to be funny in a cameo role
but for the first time I've seen he's not. These cameos try to 
draw you're attention away from the problems of the movie but 
they just help to enforce it. The movie has a whole bunch of 
useless roles trying to distract the viewer from the 
uselessness of the movie.

So the long in development project is finally out, is it
worth seeing? Of course not. At least it's not worth seeing
for acting and plot reasons, if you're guy and you like to
stare a stunningly beautiful women then this is you're flick.
I can't see a reason a woman would want to see this unless
the liked the Spice Girls and are pro-Girl Power. Drew
Barrymore looks like Baby Spice and Lucy Liu could be
Oriental Spice. Bill Murray is funny but his comedic stylings 
can not save this one from the depths of awfulness.

Stars: 1.5 out of 4
Rated PG-13 for action sequences, language, and brief nudity.
Running Time: 98 minutes
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Bill
Murray, Luke Wilson, Sam Rockwell, Crispin Glover, and Tim Curry. 
Written by: Ryan Rowe, Ed Solomon (What Planet Are You From?),
John August (Go, Titan A.E.)
Directed by: McG