Charlie's Angels DVD > Reviews > Rubbish rip-off

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Disliked it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Unmemorable
Special Effects	Good
Soundtrack	Good

Advantages:	Cameron Diaz and .  .  . that's about it
Disadvantages:	Poor acting, poor script, poor plot, rubbish villain, totally unbelievable, a shameless rip - off  -  mocks the memory of the much, much better MI and Matrix

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Charlie's Angel's falls into the fatal trap of failing to create a balance between its two main elements - that is to say 'action' and 'comedy'. Bascially it's not funny enough to be a really effective spoof (like a Naked Gun ) and so it ends up as just an embarrassing action movie, with weak jokes and a bit of totty to spice things up a little. Thank God for Cameron Diaz, as without her it really would not be worth the price of the film it's reeled on.

In fact, the film has its tongue so firmly in cheek throughout the 'action sequences' (which, by the way are a cheap rip-off from the excellent The Matrix - with all the usual slow-mo moves, but with little of the 'cool factor' that made the Wachowski brothers' movie such a hit) that you may well feel like choking. Essentially, the film doesn't take itself seriously enough to be a rival for Mission Impossible (utterly failing as it does with an attempt to imitate the brilliant break-in scene in the first MI film, and shamelessly cribbing the MI:2 plane scene in the beginning with the face masks - and pulling off of said masks) and isn't funny or clever enough to get away with it. The end-result, therefore, is that you don't laugh and you're never allowed to find the action scenes exciting or even fun simply because it's so spoofy. It's also totally unbelievable - super-human acrobatics and flying kicks are OK in The Matrix where a situation and atmosphere are created to make it credible, but in Charlie's Angel's it just doesn't work.

At the risk of sounding a little over-critical, the whole plot is rubbish aswell. The villain is supposed to have a half-decent motive for whatever dasterdly plans he comes up with - either that or he's got to be mad - but this one is neither mad, nor does he have a real motive. The whole thing revolves around this super-rich computers entrepreneur that believes 'Charlie' (yes, the Charlie) double-crossed his father while they were secret service men and killed him. Because of this he seeks revenge - OK so far I suppose but the lengths to which he goes in order to find this 'Charlie' (who, naturally is hidden away in a secret location on a beach somewhere) are simply ludicrouse. The short srory is that he hires the Angels to (unbeknown to them) break into a satellite operations computer so that he can combine this with his voice-recognition software in order to track down Charlie when he uses any kind of satellite-operated phone. He then sets himself up in a castle, attempts to get rid of the Angels when they realise they've been tricked and then sets off in a helicopter armed with two large missiles in order to destroy this little shack that Charlie is living in. Small case of overkill methinks. What isn't explained, however, is why the villain is quite literally 'hoist with his own petard' when the missile decides to fly past the hut and back towards the chopper, blowing the baddy up in the typical style.

To be fair, as long as you're not expecting a spectacularly funny film, and you're not hoping for a good Bond-Matrix-MI hybrid you'll be OK. Diaz just blondes her way around (we can excuse her for the awful scene where she's too busy chatting up a new boyfriend on the phone to break a fellow-goody out of his cell - in fact this is something of a token relationship that could just as easily have been left out as it has no bearing whatsoever on the plot, as does Lucy Liu's relationship with Joey from Friends) and Bill Murray and 'The Chad' offer some welcome relief from the bimbos when they appear. There's also a pretty good soundtrack with some good stomping tracks, although I don't know if the track by The Prodigy (called 'Smack my Bitch Up') is overly appropriate for a film that, I suppose, is trying to trumpet Girl Power and womens' rights in some strange sort of way (although the bimbo-acts by Diaz and Barrymore undermine this somewhat).

If a few fit birds and 'fun' action scenes are enough to cancel out for you a dreadful script, bad plot and shameless rip-offs from other, much better films , then go and see this film. For the rest of you - stay away.