Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (18 June 2003)
directed by McG
starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Bernie Mac, Crispin Glover, Justin Theroux, Robert Patrick, Demi Moore, Rodrigo Santoro, Shia LaBeouf, Matt LeBlarc, Luke Wilson, John Cleese
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MPAA rating: Studio: Columbia Pictures, Flower Films, Tall Trees Productions Script: John August, Cormac Wibberley, Marianne Wibberley Music: Ed Shearmur Running time: 106 minutes Tags: Action; Comedy; espionage; helicopters; television adaptation Tactical strength: [4/10]
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for action violence, sensuality and language/innuendo
I think screenwriters sometimes think that writing a spoof grants a general license for just bad writing in general. Sure, you can make every line a pun, but even a spoof should have some semblance of storyline. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle has plenty of explosions, fights, explosions, slow-motion shots of bikini-clad women walking toward the camera, and more explosions. The plot -- if you can call it one -- centers around two rings (the jewelry type) in which the Department of Justice has encrypted the real names of every participant in the witness protection program. (I don't even want to think about the stupidity of having secure data traveling around the country on something so easily stolen as a ring with no additional security mechanisms.) Separately, the rings supposedly protect the data, but put the two rings together, and you can download and sell the data to the highest axis-of-evil bidder. Fallen angel, Madison Lee (Demi Moore) and Ray Carter (Robert Patrick), a turncoat in the Department of Justice, arrange to steal the rings and put the information up for sale. So Charlie must send in the angels -- Natalie (Cameron Diaz), Dylan (Drew Barrymore), and Alex (Lucy Liu) -- to get the rings back. Charlie probably has national security in mind, but he also wants to protect the identity of Dylan, a participant in the witness protection program. (And I though all the angels had secret identities.) Bernie Mack takes over from Bill Murray as the new Bosley, and his part alone takes the movie down a notch.
But it doesn't really matter to what assignment Charlie sends the angles since the film follows the path of greatest skin exposure, highest number of explosions, and maximum stern looks from Lucy Liu. We do get a small laugh from John Cleese who plays Alex's father, but that one laugh doesn't make up for the hundreds of jokes that just fall flat. Even the exaggerated Cameron Diaz eye twinkling doesn't do much but confirm that if it weren't for the MPAA rating system, the angels wouldn't wear clothes at all.
I have to say that you could take a ten minute segment from anywhere in the film, and you would have a decent fight scene, at least one explosion, several bad puns, and probably some female skin. That ten minute segment on its own really doesn't have much wrong with it, but when you string ten of the ten-minute segments together between opening and closing credits, it gets a little tedious -- like watching a music video that loops continually without ending.
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