Charlie's Angels DVD > Reviews > Nostalgic look at a great show

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Good
Soundtrack	Outstanding

Advantages:	Great fight and action sequences
Disadvantages:	Too much cleavage !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Back in the seventies when I was a young boy just getting interesting in girls I used to love to watch the beautiful Charlie’s Angles solve crimes in their sexy manner. Imagine my excitement, albeit it hidden (I’m 34 and shouldn’t be excited at Charlie’s Angels!) when I found out about the movie.

The movie
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Charlie Townsend, a mysterious Billionaire employs three women as super investigators. When Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped because of his new super computer software, the three Angles begin to solve the case.

Natalie (Cameron Diaz) plays a dizzy blonde who also happens to be a science expert. Alex (Lucy Liu) is a tough fighting Angel who has trouble with her secret identity. Dylan (Drew Barrymore) is a playful rebellious tomboy angel. The intrepid trio set out to save Sam Rockwell and recover the missing software from the bad guy (played by Tim Curry).

Bill Murray also has a role as Bosley, the mentor for the angels, who seemingly possesses no real skills himself.

The plot is fairly predictable and for me the twists were obvious from the start as the plot was seemingly too linear. The plot isn’t very complicated giving it more appeal to a younger audience (although the movie is PG-13) I would say it is suitable for 10+.

The action sequences are excellent. The choreography of the fighting is superb, combining athletic jumps, and karate with ‘wire’ fighting to produce a style that is similar to many of the old Bruce Lee movies, combined with the slow motion effects of Matrix.

There are some great explosions in this movie; one in particular involves all three girls being blown off their feet and thrown into the windshield of a nearby car.

The movie often uses a split screen to help show separate but simultaneous actions; this gives the movie a comic strip type of feeling. The movie combines comedy with action to produce an interesting mix for a movie.

The acting
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The acting was generally OK; the movie was more about the action sequences and therefore there was no need for any strong performances from anyone. The cast was filled with many competent and proven actors.

Conclusion

The movie moves the three ‘Angels’ from being three regular special detectives into them being more like superheroes. The plot and story are not great but the effects and action sequences are very well done. The directors seem to focus on the cleavage of the Angels, and while many men will enjoy this, I do not believe they needed to attempt to make the three girls more sexy than they already are.

The choice of actors was generally very good, although I am not sure if Drew Barry more is really glamorous enough to be an Angel.

DVD Extras

The DVD extras are good featuring a profile of the ‘energetic’ director, theatrical trailers, two music videos, some cut scenes and some quite funny bloopers. I found it strange that at the end of the movie they showed the bloopers, these bloopers included parts from cut scenes and must have confused many movie goers.