Charlie's Angels

CHARLIE'S ANGELS

Rating: B
Making feature films based on well-loved television series is a dangerous game. The Avengers failed to capture what was appealing about the original show (Uma Thurman as Emma Peel?). The first Mission: Impossible desecrated the memory of the TV series for the sake of a plot twist, and many audience members complained loudly. Wild Wild West made you wonder if the filmmakers had ever even seen an episode of the show. But if the original show was pretty stupid to begin with, the filmmakers have much freer rein to take their film in the direction they choose without alienating their audience. Such is the case with Charlie's Angels, a surprisingly entertaining romp which mixes clever stunts with tongue-in-cheek humor and generally pulls it off.

This time around, the three angels working for that mysterious Charlie guy are Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore. My reaction heading in was that I wasn't particularly interested in seeing any of these ladies in a bikini. Call me crazy, but none of them "do it" for me. But by the end I'd come to like all three better than I had, which I suppose is a credit to the movie. Bill Murray is on hand to play Bosley, the go-between between Charlie and the girls. Come to think of it, I still don't understand what purpose Bosley actually serves in the organization, do you? He must be Charlie's son-in-law or something.

The director is listed in the credits as "McG". The Internet Movie Database lists his given name as Joseph McGinty Mitchell, and this is apparently his first time at the helm. Whatever his name is, it's blatantly obvious that he and his screenwriters have ingested oodles of repeat viewings of The Matrix and Mission: Impossible 2. Most of the hand-to-hand combat scenes are direct steals from The Matrix, including many "flying through the air" and "mid-air back flip" wire rig gags. The plot has elements which come uncomfortably close to those in MI2, including the angels breaking into a room brimming with high-tech security gadgets, and their assault on the villain's seaside fortress in the final reel. While it could be argued that the similarities are intended as a spoof of that previous film, the execution makes it seem a lot less like parody and a lot more like plagiarism. Suffice it to say I can picture the writers working on this script with the MI2 DVD playing in the background.

Having said that, there's still plenty of action and humor to like in this film. The fight scenes, though derivative, are still fun to watch. (There's one sequence with Drew Barrymore taking on four or five badguys which I found particularly endearing.) And several of the major stunts are very well executed, even if some of them serve little purpose in the plot. The soundtrack is largely 70's music, perhaps to evoke the era of the original show, and includes songs like "Angel of the Morning" and "Undercover Angel" (detect a pattern here?).

The one sour note in the film is the presence of Tom Green. Even though his appearances are mercifully brief, not a single thing he says or does is the least bit funny. The whole movie would have been better served if his "contributions" had been left on the cutting room floor. But I suppose we should just be thankful that Adam Sandler didn't have a cameo, too.