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charlie's
angels: full throttle |
director
McG
screenwriters
John August
Cormac Wibberley
Marianne Wibberley
story by
John August
based on
characters created by
Ivan Goff
Ben Roberts
producers
Drew Barrymore
Leonard Goldberg
Nancy Juvonen
cinematographer
Russell Carpenter
music
Ed Shearmur
editor
Wayne Wahrman
cast
Cameron Diaz (Natalie Cook)
Drew Barrymore (Dylan Sanders)
Lucy Liu (Alex Munday)
Demi Moore (Madison Lee)
Bernie Mac (Jimmy Bosley)
Justin Theroux (Seamus O'Grady)
Robert Patrick (Ray Carter)
Luke Wilson (Pete Komisky)
Matt LeBlanc (Jason Gibbons)
Crispin Glover (The Thin Man)
John Cleese (Mr. Munday)
John Forsythe (voice of Charlie)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 108m
u.s.
release: 6/27/03
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
other mcg
films
reviewed on this website:
- charlie's
angels
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Have any actresses been indulged
with as much sincere and relentless affection as the stars of
the Charlie's Angels movies? (Perhaps Reese Witherspoon
in her Legally Blonde series.) Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore
(also one of the producers), and Lucy Liu show no signs of been-there-done-that
in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, the sequel to the
2000 hit; once again, the tone
is that of a giggly, sweetly knowing, megabucks slumber party,
and when I caught it on opening night the audience of mostly
teenage girls was alive to the Pez-colored daffiness. Like a
hard guitar riff wedded to a poppy dance beat, these movies exist
somewhere between Joan Jett's and Britney Spears' renditions
of "I Love Rock and Roll" -- albeit closer to Joan,
thank goodness.
Wild child Dylan (Barrymore),
dorky Natalie (Diaz), and cool Alex (Liu) continue their empowering,
gently feminist adventures: they eschew guns, they dance and
eat with equal avidity, and, when provoked, they kick nine kinds
of ass. (Significantly, their opening number this time out --
a rescue mission at a Mongolian tavern that winks at Raiders
of the Lost Ark -- depends more on guile and retreat than
on defensive violence.) The boys -- including the returning Luke
Wilson and Matt LeBlanc, both as nonplussed as ever (LeBlanc
is never funnier than when Lucy Liu has literally thrown him
for a loop) -- mainly take the role of Boyfriend, much as women
in male-oriented action flicks fill the job of Girlfriend. It
should be noted, though, that the men -- except for Justin Theroux
as a brutal heavy with an impenetrable Irish accent -- are handled
with far more care and respect in the Charlieverse than women
can expect in many a testosterone bash. In these films, nice
guys finish first. Even Crispin Glover, popping in again as the
Thin Man with the hair fetish, is given room to have a change
of heart.
The plot is some nonsense involving
a pair of rings encoded with the identities of people in the
Witness Protection Program (one of whom is Dylan, hiding from
her misspent youth). Strangely, for a movie that finds time to
tip its hat to Marion Ravenwood, Cape Fear, Flashdance,
MC Hammer, Terminator 2,
Blue Crush, The Fast and
the Furious, and Christ knows how many other pop-culture
landmarks, Full Throttle never branches out into Lord of the Rings tribute (perhaps
because these comediennes' sisters across the pond, Dawn French
and Jennifer Saunders, have already presented probably the wittiest
LOTR skewering ever). So our Angels either have to protect
the rings or retrieve them -- I've already forgotten. Aiding
them is the movie's new Bosley -- Bernie Mac, in for Bill Murray,
and funnier and looser than Murray, who made do with what he
was given in the original but seemed a bit constrained (he already
had the modern classic Rushmore
under his belt by then, and may have felt he was regressing).
It turns out that Bernie Mac's
Bosley is actually the brother of Murray's Bosley, who grew up
with an African-American family (add Steve Martin's The Jerk
to the list). Director McG and his writers see no reason why
that shouldn't be feasible, nor why Lucy Liu's starchy dad shouldn't
be played by John Cleese. Full Throttle is turbo-charged
bubblegum fun, but it's more affable than knee-slapping, and
I only got two hearty laughs out of the evening -- once when
a black kid sasses Bernie Mac ("Do not mess with
the black man's do!"), and again when John Cleese, wildly
misinterpreting the nature of his daughter's mysterious work,
looks crestfallen nearly to death, and then, hilariously and
rather touchingly, forces himself to accept the idea of Alex
as a ravenous call girl. "Whatever makes you happy,"
he sighs.
That could've been McG's motto
as a director on both of these adventures. Cameron Diaz loves
to wiggle her butt to cheesy music? McG slams on the movie's
brakes so she can do so. Drew Barrymore wants flashbacks to Dylan's
bratty days as a face-painted wrestler and a hooting monster-truck
driver? Not a problem -- Uncle McG gets the girls what they want.
He has proven himself a master of the highly specialized field
of explosive girl-power blockbusters; time will tell whether
he has other shots in his cannon (though I don't see any Harold
Pinter adaptations in his future), but I doubt that any other
director could have delivered the Charlie's Angels films
with as much verve, enthusiasm, and obvious love as he has. Or
as much imaginative wham-bang showmanship: some of the over-the-top
action here stands shoulder to shoulder with the set-pieces in
The Matrix Reloaded, without
the tedious white-room exposition.
The movie is even kind to Demi
Moore, making a comeback as a cold-bitch former Angel with preternaturally
white teeth. Now 40, Moore looks sensational in the bikini she
wears in her first scene, and the camera genuflects to her even
as the script demonizes her (the character commits the worst
sin imaginable in the Charlieverse -- she turns her back on the
sisterhood). Moore has been absent from the screen for a few
years, disregarding Hollywood and raising her three daughters,
and the hiatus seems to have done wonders for her -- she no longer
has the humorless drive to succeed, to be taken seriously,
that has marred her past work. She's here for the ride, and everyone
working on the movie is thrilled to have her along, and you can
feel her relaxing into the proceedings. A scrapper by nature,
Moore lets go here and moves with the flow, resulting in her
most likable performance yet, despite the razory vixen she's
playing. This formerly clenched and forbidding actress may yet
have a future in light comedy.
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