Jiggle 2000

I don’t think anyone expected Charlie’s Angels to be a good movie. I don’t think anyone even wanted it to be good. The popularity of the original 1976-81 television series was never based on dramatic or intellectual content; the term “jiggle show” was coined to describe the series, and it wasn’t a reference to camera movement.

The series did a lot of jiggling in five years, and the movie seems determined to stuff the same amount of jiggle into two frantic hours. Between showcasing the pertly undulating breasts and booties of Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu on one hand, and, on the other, the computer-generated action that big-ticket adventure movies are obligated to provide, it’s no wonder that the film flails madly in all directions.

Just for the record, here’s the plot: Natalie (Diaz), Alex (Liu) and Dylan (Barrymore) are undercover agents for Charles Townsend Investigations (the voice of Charlie is once again provided by 82-year-old John Forsythe). Their present assignment is to investigate the kidnapping of a software genius named Knox (Sam Rockwell), who was abducted from the parking garage of his office building. Their chief suspect is Roger Corwin (Tim Curry), a billionaire computer magnate who “went ballistic” when he failed to acquire Knox’s company in a hostile takeover. Eventually, the Angels recover Knox safe and sound, but the case turns out not to be as cut-and-dried as they originally thought.

It took five writers (two of whom, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, get screen credit) to concoct this framework, and no fewer than eight producers, executive producers and associate producers to bring it to the screen. With that many cooks bending over the pot, it’s not surprising that director McG (a snazzy shorthand for one Joseph McGinty Mitchell, whose first film this is) made such an ungodly stew out of it.

Charlie’s Angels is critic-proof. Columbia Pictures has promoted it into such a popcorn-shoveling event that anyone who points out that the story doesn’t make sense, that the action sequences are staged like car commercials, going to slow-motion at random until the rhythm of the scenes is destroyed, that McG’s compositions are clumsy and chaotic, that Russell Carpenter’s cinematography is tinny and cheap-looking, that the jokes are stale, that Diaz, Barrymore and Liu’s proven comic abilities are mishandled, that Bill Murray, as Bosley, is given almost nothing to do—anyone who points all this out is liable to be accused of raining on the parade.

The film depends on the audience coming to the theater grimly determined to be entertained, the way The Exorcist depends on them intending to be scared, and the laughter in the audience when I saw it had a desperate edge to it. There’s no style and precious little entertainment value in Charlie’s Angels. But it makes such a joke out of its own dogged ineptitude; the very first scene features an airliner showing T.J. Hooker—The Movie and a character groaning, “Man, another movie based on an old TV show.” Pointing out that ineptitude is like beating up a man in a wheelchair. I feel like a bully even bringing it up.

What’s on the screen may be sloppy, but Charlie’s Angels still has an air of calculation about it. Luke Wilson plays a bartender who romances Diaz; his role is so superfluous that it’s hard not to think he was originally signed when he and Barrymore were an item. My guess is that when they broke up, Wilson’s scenes were hastily re-shuffled to play with Diaz, and another equally superfluous role was written in for Tom Green, Barrymore’s current squeeze—as if the producers (among them Barrymore) were simply rearranging the seats at a dinner party.

One of the biggest hits of 1967 was Casino Royale, a bloated, chaotic James Bond spoof that wore out five directors, 10 writers and 13 major stars. Not incidentally, it was also marketed by Columbia Pictures. Charlie’s Angels is Casino Royale 2000—a movie that everyone thinks they want to see, and that everyone forgets once they’ve seen it.