Charlie's Angels

The Angels' abilities are somewhere between James Bond and Jet Li, and they never shoot you. They just kick the crap out of you. But then again, how hard is it to kick the crap out of Crispin Glover? Glover, Tim Curry, Matt le Blanc, Tom Green and Bill Murray all extend their natural personalities into amusing characters for the plot.

Actually, I could have taken much more of these people (except Curry, aka Shatner-upon-Avon) and much less of the girls, but maybe that's just me.

NUDITY REPORT

No nudity except for the dark, far from the camera, scene where Drew Barrymore falls out of the window, much of which seems to be a body double. Plunging necklines, teases, etc.

The ever eccentric Glover was surprisingly effective in the stylized fight scenes, and managed to look menacing in a strange Eurotrash way, complete with exaggerated, effete cigarette smoking.

If you like those gravity-free hand combat scenes in the Jet Li movies or in The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, they do plenty of that here. Unlike The Matrix, where it was understood that the action occured in a virtual world where a mind could reprogram the rules, the Angels are just plain folks like you and me. The film doesn't try to explain how these three ordinary women can break every Olympic record when they do their fighting. You just have to accept their distorted reality as part of the gag.

DVD info from Amazon.

widescreen anamorphic, 2.35
5 featurettes on the making of the film, including the wire-work

Anyway, it's silly, dumb, and great mindless fun. It's a movie that keeps getting dumber and dumber. At first you think "this is dumb, not funny" until it gets still dumber, and then you laugh a little, and then it gets incredibly dumb, and then you finally feel the rhythm and flow with it, and laugh in spite of yourself. In this respect, it reminded me of the first Ace Ventura film.

Cameron Diaz is charming and funny, and a helluva energetic dancer. It's been so long since she did those things, and flashed her killer smile, that I almost forgot how good she is at it. Ditto Drew Barrymore. Lucy Liu is athletic, but was a strange casting choice inasmuch as they decided to make it a broad comedy, and she's not a gifted comic.

The Critics Vote

General consensus: Three stars, maybe a hair less. Roger Ebert did not follow the pack. He completely hated it, and gave it less than one star. Ebert 0.5/4, Berardinelli 3/4, Apollo 76/100.

Rotten Tomatoes summary. Quite good, 67% positive overall, but a weaker 47% from the top folks.

The People Vote ...

With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters score it 6.8/10, Apollo a very similar 69/100.

With their dollars ... A monster opening weekend! $40 million on 3000 screens. Despite a $92 million budget, the film brought home the goods, with $125 million domestic alone.