"Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle"
Columbia Pictures
Directed by McG
Screenplay by John August, Cormac Wibberley, Marianne Wibberley, based on the TV series by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts
Produced by Drew Barrymore, Leonard Goldberg and Nancy Juvonen
Starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore, Bernie Mac, Justin Theroux, Robert Patrick, Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, John Cleese and Crispin Glover
Rated PG-13
(out of four)

I’d like to say that "Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle" is a simple exercise in showing off three good-looking actresses’ beauty. But for much of the film, the actresses are wearing hideous costumes that are supposed to be funny and are lit in unpleasant colors than even make them unpleasant while almost or totally naked.

Maybe it’s actually an exercise in special effects. But during all the scenes, the action is clearly computerized and most of the shots don’t last long enough for anyone to get a good look at them.
So I guess I’m supposed to tell people that it’s a nice, time-passing comedy. Oh wait, never mind. Then it would have a quality that it lacks more than any of the others listed above—that of being funny.

Perhaps it’s a parody of the first film, which Roger Ebert, stumped, guessed might be a "parody of parodies."

There’s no real reason to relay the plot of the movie, which features most of the cast, sans Bill Murray, of the first (I almost wrote "original," then caught myself) movie version of the 1970s TV show. Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore play three indistinguishable secret agents who constantly fly in the air after explosions. That’s the film’s big joke (and was also the last film’s).

The girls go on missions with Bosley, now played by Bernie Mac who is apparently Murray’s character’s brother. Bosley’s job is to turn on the intercom that the boss, Charlie, speaks through and be funny. Mac is the only actor who actually got me to smile while watching this waste of talent, but he’s still lost in a world of bad comedy.

The big addition is Demi Moore, who plays a former agent who was one of Charlie’s angels. She appears once early on, without reason, then appears for the last two scenes so that the film might end, which makes her appearance welcome.

Other actors include John Cleese, who plays Liu’s father and shares several scenes with Matt LeBlanc (the dumb guy from "Friends"), who plays her boyfriend.

In all Cleese’s scenes, there is but one joke. Cleese thinks his daughter is a nurse, but LeBlanc sets him straight. Problem is, he never actually says, "she’s a secret agent," he just talks about Charlie so that it sounds like she’s a prostitute. This is probably the most laborious example of what has been a tired gag for several decades. What’s worse, the screenwriters seem to think that it’s comic gold and repeat the joke ad nauseam, as if the audience missed it the first 40 times.

In place of visual gags, random, meaningless explosions that send the Angels flying through the air take up more time than anything else does. If the explosions are part of the parody, then maybe they should actually have jokes associated with them. "The Naked Gun" films weren’t funny because they emphasized the bad parts of the genre they parodied, but because they found creative sight gags in a world that takes itself seriously.

The "Charlie’s Angels" franchise, by contrast, exists in a world that never intends to make any sense, that no characters take seriously. In fact, it’s as if the filmmakers are smirking the whole time because, hey, it’s a parody and it doesn’t have to make sense. By definition, however, it should be funny, and the comedy of parody comes from absurdity in things that people take seriously.

If his name weren’t bad enough, director McG ruins any gag that might have almost been funny under skilled hands by constantly cutting to different shots that add nothing to the comedy. It’s a mystery how this man, who can’t even direct a cohesive music video, has received the financing to make two feature-length wastes of time—this and the first "Charlie’s Angels"—that are virtually indistinguishable from one another.

There was a time when gags were captured on film and they were exhilarating because you could see them actually happening. Now, it appears that the medium has devolved so much that all we get is a series of extreme close-ups that don’t show the impossible action, they merely suggest it.

If instead of Buster Keaton, McG had directed the famous scene in "Steamboat Bill, Jr." in which the front of a house falls on Keaton and he survives because he was standing where the window fell, it would look something like this: We see a close-up of the wind blowing the house apart as some hip music starts up. Then comes a close-up of the unknowing Buster, now played by Drew Barrymore. After that is a shot of the nails losing their grip on the frame. The music gets louder. Next is a shot of Barrymore’s cleavage. Then, in slow motion, the house front moves forward one inch. Then we see a close-up of the cleavage, blowing in the wind in slow motion. Then the house is suddenly down, with Barrymore safe. After that, an explosion sends Barrymore flying through the air in unconvincing computer animation. Then she’d get up and does a cutesy dance that is allegedly funny because she’s a well-known actress, doing a dance.

And this scene would not etch itself on the pages of cinematic history, but simply be part of 111 minutes of thoughtless nonsense that gives even something as trivial as summer entertainment a bad name.
jeremy@red-mag.com