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Charlie's Angels by Michael Atkinson There's irony and then there's irony--pop culture is so ear-deep in ironic triple-takes we're never sure if what we're watching is supposed to be what we're watching, or if it is instead a mockery of what we wanted to watch (which might be what we were supposed to be watching anyway), or if we're the ones being mocked. Sometimes it's all of the above, but it only matters if the manufacturers of the Hollywood product in question forget a vital fact: that irony is a form of humor, and you can ironically squeeze the substance out of the Bhagavad-gita with multiplicating mirror-image non-meanings all you want, so long as it's funny. Of all the '70s shows to be semi-ironically reconstituted for the big-screen in the Clinton era, Charlie's Angels may not have been the most ironic in intent--it's hard to say, even now--but it remains its epoch's definitive explosion of camp, which is irony before the short hairs grow in. (Susan Sontag didn't say that, I did.) The new Charlie's Angels is irony with a capital "I", which means it's not a real action film in any sense. We're not supposed to take the Angels' adventures any more seriously than we do the reruns of the old show--whatever was inherently absurd in the series has been made manifestly comic here. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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Still, having larky, nonsensical fun at the expense of a '70s action show in which Farrah Fawcett-Majors was someone's idea of a crime fighter is hardly an achievement, and the movie (directed by commercial/music video phenom McG) aims so low it could stub your toes. Fittingly, the plot is some neo-tech chicanery transformed midway through into a vendetta against unseen billionaire Charlie (still John Forsythe), and the Angels (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu) do their superhuman best at running interference. From one cheesy, cheaply-assembled set piece to the next, there's not a smirk left unsmirked, from the casting of a glowering Crispin Glover as the villainous henchman (his Matrix-style kung fu battle with the Angels in an alley is hilarious), to Diaz's beatific dreams of being a disco queen, realized in perfectly choreographed fantasy and, in a ripping interlude, on "Soul Train". In fact, the film is cast for maximum yucks (Bill Murray is Bosley, and Sam Rockwell and Tim Curry round out the bad guys), but it's Diaz's movie. Cut loose as a Farrah-style ditz who karate-battles a villain while talking to her new boyfriend on a cell phone ("Hey, I really like that guy!" she fumes when the phone is shattered), Diaz is a long-legged, plunging-necklined, butt-shaking vision of girlhood high on power and fun. If nothing else, Charlie's Angels puts a lens to her sun, and you can't help being warmed. PAGE 1 | 2 |