Charlie's Angels
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, 2000's big-screen adaption of the late 70s TV show gave us Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu as three talented agents workng for a man named Charlie (voiced by John Forsythe who reprised his role from the series). A massive box office hit, staying at number one for four weeks in a row, Charlie's Angels took some flack from some critics for aspects of its plot and its cheesecake factor which director McG would lean into even more heavily in the film's sequel.
In the film, software mogul Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) hires the Angels to recover a program stolen by his competitor, or so he says. The villain of the piece, Knox actually uses the Angels to get his hands on the tech (which is really just GPS for a cellphones) which he plans to use to track down the man who he hold responsible for the death of his father while sending his wacky assassin (Crispin Glover) after the three women to cover his tracks.
Although you could certainly argue the film leans into comedy a bit too hard, and at times unnecessarily (such as casting Tom Green as love interest for one of the Angels), some of the segments work quite well including the short montages we get of the Angels in disguise, the break-in to the vault, the alleyway fight, and the climactic rescue of both Bosley (Bill Murray) and Charlie.
The film works as a fun action-adventure romp as the three actresses knew exactly what they were getting into and leaned into the script. Taking the place of either of the Monroe sisters, Diaz's Natalie takes advantage of the actress' goofy nature allowing for more than one "blonde" moment in the film while not preventing her from kicking ass in the field. Personally, I could have done without the Soul Train sequence, but Diaz sells it with her infectious energy.
Obviously an update of Kate Jackson's Sabrina, Barrymore's Dylan is the more levelheaded while also being a bit too trusting always falling for the wrong guy at every turn. Although she doesn't have quite the 1-to-1 comparison as the other two leads, since the show wasn't exactly culturally rich, Lucy Liu turns out to be smart casting for the third Angel Alex often choosing to use martial arts or a weapon of convenience rather than get into a shoot out with the baddies.
Rockwell and Murray lean into the same energy of the film while Road House's Kelly Lynch and, the still admittedly goofy, Glover are asked to play the more intimidating villains. The 2000 version of Charlie's Angels isn't a great film by any objective standard, but it's more fun than I think some of its critics are willing to admit, even if it does tilt a bit into guilty pleasure territory. And (other than the tech our baddie is after, which now looks a bit quaint), it has aged fairly well over the years where it has been released a number of times on DVD, Blu-ray, and even 4K. The film is also available on several streaming services.
- Title: Charlie's Angels (2000)
- IMDb: link
