Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle | Review

Ideas and energy get lost in unflavorful poor-performance sequel.

A fashion show of skimpy bikinis, wrapped up in some maligned extreme game event scenario where eye-shadows in a fruit bowl of colors and a totally out of place pop tune and a couple of product endorsements to go with it take the stage front. This is not a movie; this is a collage of music videos. Not surprisingly coming from a director, by the name of MCG who made his way into the Hollywood market because of such talents.

All fond memories of Farrah’s famous poster imprint on a discarded mug used for paintbrush removal in my garage have more of an imprint on me than the first installment in this movie franchise and now with Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle I can say the same. Actors Cameron Diaz (Gangs of New York) Drew Barrymore (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind ) and Lucy Liu (Chicago) are a far cry from what I would call strong female images especially when all they’ve got are characters who look good, kick good but are flustered by having empty personalities. It starts off with a humorous 007-ish scenario, giving us our favorite threesome kung fuing their ways into the unknown territory of Mongolia, but once they return home, the movie tries to live up to the full throttle name time and time again, never giving us a break from suspension of believe or from the on-going profusion of walk-in characters who mean nothing to the film, including the very pointless boyfriends. However, the limited roles of Demi Moore (Ghost) who plays the girl with the golden guns and John Cleese (Die Another Day) who plays a confused father make up somewhat for what was lost in Bernie Mac’s () interpretation of Bosley’s character.

This is nothing but glorified T and A, where the only surprises come from how long a tiny oriental woman can stand holding a huge SONY television set and not by anything that the plot has to offer. The two ring bit is pretty weak stuff just like most of acting, but what really turned me off was the CGI which looked scrappily over-worked. There are no bullet-proof vests to protect the viewer from an onslaught of nothing, of fresh ideas, of originality and in the end this makes for a pretty awful flick which is in need of a bad make-over if the makers want to add a third to the franchise-they should also consider cutting out the multiple characters and paying Bill Murray the extra pesos that he had demanded for the sequel.

Instead of a Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle containing the cool homage to the television show or the kitsch from that era, I now have Starsky & Hutch to look forward to. Besides Moore’s incredible bod, there isn’t much going on here, or perhaps too much going on here, basically, I’ll take a Fawcett and co. re-run over this chopped liver.

Rating 0.5 stars