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June 28, 2003
Review: (movie) Charlie's Angles: Full Throttle
Cooking, as my girlfriend reminded me last night, is more than just adding ingredients to heat. All things considered, this is too bad; burning this is something I really know how to do. A similar rule can be made for movies; hot women and explosions are a good combination, but if the timing isn't there, the whole thing will fall apart. Charlie's Angles: Full Throttle is an excellent example of how not to make a movie...
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of the second one, and was caught pleasantly off guard by the plot twist at the end. This new one was just a mess, however. The weirdest part was the year: isn't it way too early to be nostalgic for 1995? At least, it seemed to be set in that year, though I could be wrong. All I know for sure is that 8 years before 2003 is not the center of the heavy mettle era, though 8 years before 1995 sure could be. So the first big question is: Why did the director decide to play this horrendous chronological trick? It served no point, and yet did confuse...
Speaking of confusion: Why did the first movie go so far out of its way to ensure that I didn't have to be familiar with the TV series (a good move, by the way), and yet the second one spend loads of time referring to the series? There were references to previous angles scattered throughout the whole movie, references that may or may not have been correct, but I had no clue...
The chief villain was a former angle, something that was supposed to be the movie's big twist ending, but turned out to be something I learned from watching the previews. Demi Moore is still hot at age 50somthing, but I was a bit confused at why she was slinking around in her panties waiting for the various mobsters to show up...
A well-plotted movie will have 1 villain per 1 hero. Inigo Montoya has the 6-fingered man and Wesley has Prince Humperdinck. We learn about why each of these parings through back-story and clever writing. The Princess Bride may be an exceptionally good example of this, but any D & D player can expound on the basic principles. In CA:FT; Lucy Liu ends up with a romantic foil (one of the Friends crew, I can never remember their real names. Anyway, Joey), which is fine as far as it goes; though when they get back together at the end, both me and my GF were wondering why that had happened. John Cleese shows up as Ms. Liu's father with some wonderful back and forth that may make the movie a definite rental...
Drew Barrymore's character ends up an old lover as her primary villain. The twist is that the old lover is the head of the Irish Mob. Um, ok. When did the Irish get a mob? Suffice it to say, this ended up pretty lamely...
Cameron Diaz had the oddest villain take-down assignment: Demi-Moore. The movie never adequately explained why these two should have special enmity, why we should root for Ms. Diaz as the one who has to take down Ms. Moore. Failure to explain that killed the last half of the movie for me...
And speaking of the last half of the movie, the mid point is both too early and too late to add plot twists. Especially when the plot was already incoherent enough as it was. Over and over again, I asked myself why they were doing any given activity. It was like a poorly scripted video game where there are certain tasks that must be performed to get to the next level, but we don't get to know why that is...
Ultimately it was the poorly developed plot that killed the movie for me. If all I wanted was unconnected sets of T and A, I could just run out to Best Buy and pick up Girls Gone Wild. Since I wanted to see a movie with a plot as well as T and A, I can't help but feel a bit cheated...
Rating: 5 stars out of a whole fricking galaxy. One star for each hot babe plus John Cleese and Bernie Mac. The fact that not even those guys can save this movie should say something about how bad it is...
Posted by Andrew at June 28, 2003 01:30 PM
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Comments
Uh, I think you're thinking way too much about this one. I actually thought this movie was pretty good. Ok, not "good" but certainly much more enjoyable than the first one. The only reference to the original show was Jaclyn Smith in the bar, but that was pretty understandable even if you've never seen the show. And I thought the myriad pop culture references scattered throughout were pretty clever. Indiana Jones, Flashdance, the Olsen twins. C'mon, it even had Eric Bogosian and Crispin Glover. And that was Bruce Willis that Demi Moore killed i the beginning, wasn't it? So the "plot" was basically stolen from the first Mission: Impossible. But you don't really go see a movie like this for the plot.
Posted by: Aaron at July 2, 2003 03:35 PM
i love it it is so good i can,t see it
Posted by: brigham at September 2, 2003 03:33 PM
they are excellant.
me and my friend kristy love them so much we are going as lisa and drew to our semi formal this year.
Posted by: Jade Bishop at May 26, 2004 05:21 PM