What the devil was 'Angels' director thinking?

Friday, June 27, 2003

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

In the original "Charlie's Angels" big screen incarnation, the TV show provided little more than inspiration for a big budget goof.

MOVIE REVIEW

CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE

DIRECTOR: McG

CAST: Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore, Bernie Mac

RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for action violence, sensuality and language/innuendo

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza 12, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C+

See photo gallery.

Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu -- with the aid of CGI noodling -- got to kick and leap like Jackie Chan, play hard like extreme sports junkies and pose like cheescake pinups in an ever changing wardrobe.

"Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" goes from goof to shameless self-parody. That's fine if you can just kick back and enjoy director McG's video game world of in-jokes, reality-defying action, burlesque showgirl numbers (Angels just want to strut their stuff), and jukebox collection of 1980s flashback hits.

It's flashy, it's often funny (Bernie Mac, stepping in for Bill Murray as the new Bosley, can take much of the credit for that), and it resembles a movie so much that soon it demands something resembling motivation, character, a plot, anything to explain the seemingly arbitrary connections between the stunts and the skits.

Why has a former Angel (Demi Moore) turned super villainess and called out the new crew for a cat fight? Why is an Irish mobster (Justin Theroux) chasing Drew Barrymore a la "Cape Fear" (complete with snatches from Bernard Herrmann's score)? Why is top secret Justice Department information stored in a pair of decoder rings? What, if anything, is the point to all this?

Even the Angels lose the giddy girl scout goofiness. There was something charming in the way they lost all their steely yet cuddly composure when they landed back in their clumsy private lives. Now, when they aren't strutting through parodies of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "C.S.I." with nothing but attitude and a Vegas showgirl wardrobe, they devolve into giggly spy school sorority sisters, lacking what little defining personality they had in their debut.

McG has become less a director than a cinematic mixmaster, riffing on pop culture references, spinning special effects into near abstract spectacle, and winking at the audience between the grooves while sheer momentum carries the film.

What's left is kinetically dazzling and utterly nonsensical, a self-aware caricature of an action movie. McG is simply too cool to take any of it seriously, and too dazzled by the noise, the music and the empty spectacle to realize that the joke is on him.