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.

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?

RageLite review - Wonder Woman

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about any DC films and it seems like they’re starting to get back on track by basically ditching the extended universe and focusing on standalone films. Justice League being a critical and financial disaster clearly forced a rethink on they’ll handle their properties, but that doesn’t mean no good came out of it. Wonder Woman’s minimal role in Batman v Superman was among the better aspects of it. It didn’t stop that film being utter garbage but it did give me optimism going into her solo movie.

Female solo superhero movies have in general been pretty bad up to this point, with Catwoman obviously being the worst. But then you look at the writing talent, and worries start to crop up again, we have Zack Snyder, who I have had issue with in the past, Allen Heinberg, if I’m not mistaken he wrote the awful Wonder Woman run post Infinite Crisis (the one where she couldn’t pump gas) and Jason Fuchs, who… co-wrote an ice age film. Notice how there are no women on the writing team, either.

Of course, Patty Jenkins is the one directing so at least there’s representation there, but her experience is mostly in television. Does this hold the film back? Well it certainly didn’t seem to, as the film made $821m on its $150m budget, more than Man of Steel or Justice League and managed an impressive 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating and an 88% audience rating. So what helped here? Let’s take a look.

Sequel Baiting #6 - Charlie's Angels vs Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

Time for something for little less serious. There have been hundreds of takes on the spy genre, but none scream girl power quite like Charlie’s Angels. Based on the 80s TV show, Charlie’s Angels followed 3 sexy spies doing missions for their faceless man known as Charlie. I’ve not seen the show, but I’ve seen the movies… Oh, have I seen the movies. Although the show was ultimately cancelled due to low ratings, Charlie’s Angels has gained a bit of a cult following, can’t imagine why *cough*boobs*cough* spawning the creation of Charlie’s Angels in 2000 and Full Throttle in 2003. (Also a 2011 revival series and a 2019 remake *sigh*) critically and commercially, the first comes out on top, but we’re not here to look at what other people think.