Redux Month - Charlie's Angels Full Throttle

Oh boy, we’re back to this one. So, Redux month continues with Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

I gave this quite a scathing review back in the day but has time changed my mind? Well in part, but to that in a moment. McG is back in the director’s chair and John August is back with the story, Cormac and Marianne Wibberly are now helping to write the screenplay, I Spy and The 6^th Day were their only credited films at this point.

Making $259.1m on a $120m budget meant the movie wasn’t as successful as the first, and with a 49% RT rating, it was less critically successful as well, what went wrong? Let’s take another look.

We open with the Angels rescuing an official from a seedy middle-eastern looking hole in the mud, we sadly get a reprisal of Cameron Diaz doing a german accent (kill me now) but things quickly improve as we see early on that the girls can actually punch things now, this leads to a substantial improvement in the action as there are more varied moves and it doesn’t come off quite as stilted. 

It’s revealed the official carried a ring, which is 1 of 2 parts of a code containing hidden aliases of people in witness protection (seems contrived by OK). The other half belongs to DOJ William Rose Bailey, who’s killed shortly after by a mysterious stranger. With both rings now in the hands of the enemy it’s up to the Angels, and not the FBI or someone more qualified, to stop this villain before the list of witness aliases are sold.

The improvement in the action is where my compliments of this movie basically ends. OK, the girls are still endearing together and they make an effort to try and add depth to Dylan’s character (couldn’t be because Drew Barrymore was a producer, could it?) pity it’s mostly made up of cliched rubbish, so let’s start with that shall we.

Dylan always falls for the bad guys, she fell for Knox in the first film and this film, and in this film she falls for a random surfer who murdered someone, it’s revealed she fell for a maniac Irishman, and for some reason she falls for her obsessive stalker, the Creepy Thin Man. Oh, and she fell for Tom Green also.

It’s revealed she’s part of the witness protection programme but Charlie was summoned when her skills were noted. My question is if this were true, why the f*ck were they involved in this case? This is personal to Dylan and personal clouds judgement, making them less effective on the field. Taking the 2019 film as canon, there were other Angels out there who could’ve done it, why keep them on this case, especially after Seamus got out.

And let’s get to Seamus, he’s a sexist pr*ck with violent tendencies that somehow make him a match for Dylan even though she’s had formal combat training and reflexes that can dodge bullets. Anyway, the one thing I mind less about her arc is the thoughts of what happens if Nat decided to move on from the Angels, it’s nice that she doesn’t like things to change but is willing to accept it for her friend’s sake, props to Barrymore for that bit of acting when it looks like Peter’s about to propose to Nat, -100 points however for the joke immediately after that it was a puppy tag and not a wedding ring. Why go down on one knee for that? Why carry a dog tag in a ring box? Why reveal this in public?

I was talking about Dylan, wasn’t I? We get the stock bit where she leaves the team briefly, not wanting to get her friends hurt but is inspired back by a former angel we barely see (I think she’s one from the original series, if it is, it’s poor fan-service, if it isn’t then it’s confusing)

I said in my original review that they gave the Creepy Thin Man a sorta redemption arc and I wholly take that back. The Creepy Thin man is an obsessive stalker of Dylan, he sides with the angels on several occasions not because he cared, repented or anything that resembles character growth but because he’s obsessed with Dylan and didn’t want her killed. His death is wholly deserved and the fact that Dylan actually ended up liking him is insulting.

Minor notes on the other two. Alex is bad at lying, apparently, giving different cover stories to her boyfriend and father, so the awkward interactions between them can result in comedic misunderstandings that aren’t as funny as you’d think. Jason’s also on a “time-out” because of reasons. Nat and Peter are living together, and that’s it for Nat

I said in my original review that the comedy in this one is bad, I feel I may have been a little harsh, but it doesn’t have a Tim Curry for me to like, the girls still have little witty banter during the fights, the enemies are still deliberately not funny and there’s plenty of cringe to go around. Such as the new Bosley (played by the late Bernie Mack) who isn’t funny or really useful in any meaningful way, then there’s Shia LaBeouf who’s here for some reason.

But the problem of the comedy isn’t so much the content but the context, this film has some pretty serious tonal problems. Its main plot-line is a very serious one, but rather than providing levity through the story, it has a dark moment like the murder of the DOJ official, cut immediately to Nat shaking her ass to the camera. It’s not shocking because she’s done it before, so it doesn’t work as a shock. It flip-flops from deadly serious to deadly silly at will. The first film had a less serious plot and the jokes worked with it.

Madison Lee (Demi Moore) serves as the main antagonist for the film. Her modus operandi, as it were, is that she was a former angel, but things went south when she failed to work with her team and got herself fired, I think, and now works as an independent agent. Given that description, I have to wonder why this plan was the one she came up with? She has skills, why not just rob a bank if she wants money?

This was an incredibly convoluted scheme where the motivation doesn’t really match.

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle improves on the action and tries to give some character depth with one of the angels at least but ultimately fumbles with a confusing and nonsensical story, a series of poor jokes that don’t mesh well with the overall tone and a villain whose motivation doesn’t line up with her plan.

Rating 25/100