Redux Month - Charlie's Angels

Hey, don’t call me angel

So the Charlie’s Angels reboot came out in late 2019 to the fanfare of almost no-one, in part thanks to the godawful choice of song that accompanied the trailer, but we’re not talking about that one today it’s redux month

And we’re looking at the 2000 film, directed by McG, who since has directed such greats as This Means War and the sequel to this movie (who am I kidding?) and written by Ryan Rowe, whose bibliography looks more like a rap sheet, Ed Soloman, who wrote the Bill and Ted films, but also the Super Mario Bros movie and John August, at this point he’d written God, Go, and Titan AE, he went onto write the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie and the live action Aladdin, make of that what you will.

The film made some money, $264m on a $93m budget, and received a positive 62% rotten tomatoes rating with critics, but audiences landed it a mere 45%, with the averages of both being around a 6.2/10. So, looking back on this movie, has my opinion changed?

Alex (Lucy Liu), Nat (Cameron Diaz) and Dylan (Drew Barrymore) are the titular angels of the plot, they work with their colleague Bosley (Bill Murray) in the townsend agency under the employ of Charlie (John Forsythe) a mysterious voice in a box who is unseen. Things get interesting when they’re hired by Vivian Wood (Kelly Lynch) to find kidnapped CEO Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) suspicions should’ve been raised already as why didn’t they just go to the police?

After some investigation into business rival Roger Corwin (Tim Curry) eventually leads to Knox’s rescue, things soon begin to unravel, how will the Angels cope with a foe that hates their boss?

So, this film’s story isn’t great. The motivation for the main villain isn’t revealed till after his death, there are multiple contrived sequences and some of the set-pieces are outright embarrassing (I’m looking at you, yodelling scene). The heist feels straight out Mission: Impossible with details like the white suit making very little sense in the context we’re given. The girls being in the proximity of 3 separate explosions without so much as a scratch.

The angels do have chemistry together, the three of them are fine actors but as I stated in my previous review, there’s not enough to differentiate them in terms of personality. They’re all relentlessly cheery, all the time and this hurts the comedy in the long run as there’s no contrast. This also applies to their specialist skills which a times feel a little overly specific. Bosley doesn’t seem to have many special skills to help in missions, either, having to serve as the damsel in the climax.

The film certainly has some sexist sh*t in it. Nat in her first scene is in a bikini for no real reason, later shakes her butt at the camera whilst wearing spider-man underwear. Alex whips her hair about like it’s a shampoo commercial and Dylan gets full on nudity, or at least as much as you could get in a PG-13 film (incidentally it got a 15 rating in the UK). All of them have love interests where most of their time outside the agency is spent. I don’t mind this in principle but it’s by and large the girls’ only character arcs. It hurts further for Nat who spends scenes flirting in the middle of important missions (encouraged by the other girls no less) aside from interrupting important missions, Peter -(Luke Wilson) does not serve the narrative, just providing another embarrassing set-piece of Nat shaking her ass at the camera.

The CG looks very, very dated. But that’s the least of the action’s problems. The simple fact is the choreographers seem to want them to fight mostly using pure legwork with the occasion grapple of weapon. It’s rare to see any of them throw a punch. This stifles the action considerably and makes it look very unnatural.

The music is actually pretty solid, using music promoting girl power or just songs that incorporate the word ‘angel’ it’s basic but it works. The comedy is hit and miss, as occasionally the jokes land but oftentimes it comes up as embarrassing (the aforementioned yodelling), Tim Curry is easily the best thing about this movie.

The villains of the film are somewhat underwhelming, I mentioned already that the main villain’s motivation isn’t revealed until after his defeat. His partner in crime is boring and the Creepy Thin Man (Crispin Glover) is a weird obsessive freak who rips out hair and sniffs it, not entirely sure what to make of him.

Charlie’s Angels is not a great film. It has come decent comedy and engaging, if overly similar leads but falls when it comes just about everything else.

Rating 40/100