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Uggh. What an atrocity this is! Three months ago I wouldn't have cared, but after seeing the preview, I was actually looking forward to Charlie's Angels. I figured it might be a nice, campy movie that was easy on both the eyes and the funny bone. Ha! My friend Garth gets more laughs with his Benjamin Britten impressions, and let's be honest--you can only have so much sexploitation until it just becomes exploitation.

The movie actually starts well. From the funny, protracted slo-mo shot of Lucy Liu ("Ally McBeal") shaking her long, dark tresses to Cameron Diaz's ludicrous dance routine (in cartoon underwear, no less) to the great line "you know, for a bikini waxer, you know an awful lot about bombs," Charlie's Angels strikes the right tone of winking humor. "We know this is ludicrous cheesecake, but isn't it sweet?" the movie seems to ask. Well, yes, at least until we chew on the creamy center of mucous and sludge.

To write a paragraph about the plot would be to spend more time on it than did screenwriters Ryan Rowe, Ed Solomon, and John August. Clearly, their only concerns were trying to figure out how many Matrix-stealing fight scenes they could work into the movie and how often they could garb our three "heroes" in skin-tight clothing. On both counts, they succeed marvelously.

The parade of costumes is particularly, uh, revealing. Drew Barrymore (Never Been Kissed) wears a skin-tight racing jumpsuit which she conveniently unzips to her navel. Lucy Liu dons a leather bodysuit for her performance as a dominatrix-cum-efficiency expert. Cameron Diaz (There's Something About Mary) has her own body-hugging piece of fabric, though hers is a virginal white. Liu and Diaz combine for a fatuous belly-dance routine. Later in the movie, Drew Barrymore will have the indignity of wearing nothing but a plastic swimming pool, though that might be preferable to the sexual encounter her tongue has with a steering wheel. And since this is a Three Musketeers-like assortment, let's not forget the sequence in which all three shed their diving suits in luscious slow-motion, or at least they do before the movie cuts to another scene (curse you, PG-13 rating . . . curse you to hell!!). The lowest point in this awful amalgam of attire is when our trio delivers a singing telegram dressed up as sexy, Swedish mountain girls.

The movie at least moves along . . . until it slows down. Then, in a twenty-minute sequence in which all three entertain their boyfriends, the movie's obvious flaws become positively excruciating. Barrymore ignites sparks with her man over a game of Scrabble, while Liu makes dinner for her beau in a Streamline trailer. Think of a non-stop day of watching infomercials, particularly that one about tarot cards, and you come close to imagining what our Angels are like in love. Even Cameron Diaz's sweet, self-deprecating personality can't save the scene where she rouses a skeptical room of Soul Train dancers (and her bartender boyfriend) with her unique take on hip-hop dancing. Fortunately, all this romance is mercifully ended by good old-fashioned gunfire. Unfortunately, the bullets are merely a prelude to more dorky fight scenes.

The worst part about Charlie's Angels--yes, even worse than the moments when, as Charlie is talking over the speaker phone, all three actresses get these dreamy looks as if they have serious father issues to work through--is how stupid it assumes we, the audience, are. How stupid are we? We're so stupid that when Drew Barrymore spells out 'enemy' on the Scrabble board, she says it out loud in case five-letter words are too much for us.

No, let me take that back. The worst part of the movie is the pain of watching actors descend into the pit of despair. Drew Barrymore, for all of her limitations, usually seems like someone you'd want to hang out with. Not this Drew. Here, her other role as the movie's producer seems to have distracted her with dreams of stealing our money. Lucy Liu just looks as if she'd rather be anywhere else. Even Bill Murray (Rushmore), who's been positively golden in everything he's been in lately, isn't funny. Clearly, he's been beaten into submission by the horrific direction.

And it is horrible, too. The aforementioned fight scenes, of which there are far too many, are embarrassing. The car chase scenes are stripped of their context, so that even the incongruous sight of a race car jumping off of a suspension bridge seems flaccid. The numerous reaction shots in the movie are appalling. Even a simple thing like blocking a scene is too much for McG. Yes, that's the director's name. No, I am not making it up, and apparently it's not an alias to avoid detection. 

In the end, though, the movie's greatest crime might be its attitude towards women. How exploitive is it? Well, once the narrative is finished, the Angels are lounging on the beach and suddenly get the urge to frolic in the surf--with nothing on but flimsy, see-thru t-shirts. Watch the slo-mo, remember that this movie is produced by two women, and ponder how far feminism has fallen.

Charlie's Angels is like watching a transaction take place. People spending money and people making money. If that sounds exciting to you, call me. We'll go shopping. 

J. Robert Parks 10/30/2000