This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.
Movie #48: Charlie’s Angels
Here’s some interesting math. I’ve had a lifelong affinity for Drew Barrymore. Like the weird guy who did the My Date With Drew movie, only I never had any interest in stalking her. I can’t explain it, really, I just think she’s awesome and our birthdays are close together and I’d really like to hang out and be friends with her. Whatever. On the other side of that coin, I really detested Cameron Diaz ever since The Mask. Again, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but she was just so … false, maybe? I found her completely and utterly annoying. BUT! If you take my huge affection for Drew, add Lucy Liu, who I was kind of neutral-positive on (she wasn’t all that well-known at the time, though she’d had small roles in lots of things for several years), multiply it by my love of quippy, flashy movies (to the very concept of a Charlie’s Angels reboot-th power), and add the square root of at least half a dozen clever cameos plus a killer breakout performance by Sam Rockwell, it actually MAKES ME LIKE CAMERON DIAZ. Only in this one movie at first, but after the sequel it was completely cemented. Weird, right?
There’s not even anything to this movie, except quips and flash. The plot is somehow both convoluted and thin, and it apparently exists only to give its three stars the opportunity to vamp it up in crazy costumes. It’s silly and punny and charming and I absolutely love it. I love Matt LeBlanc as a big time action movie star (it’s almost as if Joey Tribbiani finally made it). I love Tim Curry as a pervy billionaire. I love Melissa McCarthy as the overfriendly office worker. I love L.L. Cool J (all the ladies love Cool James, you know) going meta in the opening scene by complaining about cheesy TV shows being made into movies and then turning out to be one of Drew’s costumes. I love Drew’s ex-boyfriend Luke Wilson and current (at the time) boyfriend Tom Green both showing up as romantic interests — Wilson as Pete, for Diaz’s Natalie, and Green as Chad for Barrymore’s Dylan aka Starfish. (Drew really seems like the kind of woman who becomes friends with all, or at least several, of her exes — which seems like a theoretically great way to be, though I could never pull it off with any kind of aplomb.) And I love love love love love Crispin Glover as the creepy thin man who escapes death at least twice in this movie alone (spoiler — he’s in the sequel).
The Angels themselves are also just perfect, as far as I’m concerned. Natalie with her dance sequences, Dylan’s transparent interest in Knox (Rockwell) (she wants to shake, not bake), and Alex constantly flipping her “goddamn hair” in slow motion. In the same way women like to tell you which Sex and the City character they are most like, I compare myself to these particular Angels, and I am all of them. I am a weird combination of flighty and brilliant and I can be very easily amused (Natalie). I’m an offbeat girl with a sometimes harder edge who likes the risk, sexiness and excitement of a bad boy but is always looking for a sense of belonging (Dylan). And I’m a matter-of-fact woman who knows what she wants and makes plans to go out and get it, sans bullshit (Alex).
I really enjoy a lot of this film: the singing yodel-gram girls, Dylan at the speedway in a va-va-va-voom jumpsuit with tons of ’70s porn star blonde hair and cleavage licking a steering wheel, Alex as a dominatrix efficiency expert, Alex as a masseuse with a french-tip pedicure (the first time I’d ever seen such a thing, and suddenly it was huge), and Natalie in the driver’s ed vehicle with head-gear and Princess Leia buns, among other things. But let’s circle back around to the magnificence that was Sam Rockwell’s performance as his character Eric Knox reveals himself to be the bad guy. Ostentatious, sexy, and magnetic all of a sudden, he’s completely transformed from his previous bumbling aw-shucks guy. He dances, he flirts, he simmers. It’s spectacular. I really wish Sam Rockwell had an entire movie just to do that kind of thing in, but then I’d be afraid of getting another Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or something.
So somehow with a movie that has almost no substance whatsoever, I have found a million and one things to talk about, and could go on for quite some time about the campy fun of it all — I didn’t even touch on Bill Murray’s utter Bill Murray-ness — but instead I will leave you with a final thought: “The Chad is great. The Chad is great. The Chad … is stuck.”
Viable Option 