Charlie's Angels

In one of Charlie's Angels' many interminable fight scenes, one of our heroines is thrown to the ground by an unscrupulous male villain. Looking up from the floor, we see from her point of view that she's completely surrounded by thick-necked, thuggish men, with no obvious means of escape. A few seconds later, the men are all wiped out, having been dispensed with by a circle of women now standing around their fallen bodies.

Subtle, the film is not. (It literally opens with the line "I think women can do anything"). But, as it happens, nothing in the franchise, from the '70's-era TV show that spawned it, to its various other big-screen iterations, has ever had much use for shading its intention. The TV show started out as a sort of male fantasy, watching beautiful women run around commanded by an unseen man, to do his (generally good) bidding (and being assisted by an utterly sexless other male); the first film, from 2000, was a kind of cutesy proto-gurl power vehicle, with Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu cavorting around and beating villains up as they were working out their boy crushes at the same time.

Here, helmed by a woman, Elizabeth Banks, for the first time, the message has been significantly altered in meaning, if not in style. This go-round, women, albeit still runway beautiful, are doing it for themselves, even if that means making mostly the same silly claptrap as their various male predecessors.

We have to at least give it this much: Banks and her production team have finally managed to root out the essential patriarchal elements in which the source material was so deeply and infuriatingly rooted. We no longer have a team of beautiful, young female operatives taking orders from a disembodied male voice over a phone speaker. Nor do we have a male go-between for the women.

The beautiful women are still there of course, but their go-between, Bosley (Banks), is female, and the film alludes to the idea that the voice of "Charlie" is also actually female. Having dispensed with the more condescending elements of the series, Banks still keeps many of the more inane elements -- ridiculous plotting, silly car chases, witless banter -- unfortunately intact. While it might seem something of a step forward to have a woman make a big Hollywood action money grab, it's depressing that it's more or less the same old gunk, albeit pointedly less sexist.

We begin with a pair of angels, as always, working undercover, as Sabina (Kristen Stewart), coos enticingly with a wealthy young magnate, Jonny Smith (Chris Pang), at the top of a fancy high-rise hotel in Rio, as Jane (Ella Balinska), a tall willowy Brit angel, makes her way up the elevator and through a host of Smith's bodyguards. Having dispatched them, and arresting Smith with yet another Bosley (Patrick Stewart), about to retire, the angels go on an extended leave.

Having established the main players, we arrive in Hamburg, some months later, as Elena (Naomi Scott), a brilliant computer engineer, is having reservations about Calysto, the new, portable energy source she has designed. Realizing it could be used as a deadly, untraceable weapon in the wrong hands, she takes her concerns to her smug director (Nat Faxon), who disparages her condescendingly (paging #metoo), and ignores her dire warnings in order to suck up to his billionaire boss (Sam Claflin). Determined to stop the manufacturing of the potentially dangerous ­devices, she enlists the aid of the Townsend Agency, involving the angels, just as a smooth-cheeked assassin Hodak (Jonathan Tucker), attempts to kill her at the meet.

Thus ensues a whole bunch of other plot theatrics, none of which make terribly much sense, but nearly all lead to car chases, extended beat down sessions (at least minus the ridiculous wire-work of the previous films), and/or fancy, expensive parties filled with wealthy elitists, in which the angels continue the infiltrations and beat downs at regular intervals. At seemingly every turn, men say thoroughly annoying things ("Don't forget to smile!"), and the angels end up beating the hell out of them for it. I realize as I write that, I'm making it sound more fun than it actually is. Certainly, which it could have been, anyway.

Clearly, Banks is trying to appropriate the gist of the series, silly as it is, and add in a feminist self-empowerment spin. To her credit, she's shifted the essential maleness of the series away from sexualizing and disempowering the angels. Beauties all, they aren't slinking around in low-cut dresses, complaining about their relationship problems as they go about their spying business; they're wearing mostly functional clothing and wailing the living hell out of everyone in their way. They also don't have to resort to cunning to overpower their male enemies, Jane, in particular, takes great pride in beating the would-be assassin to a pulp, while trolling his abilities ("You only have seven moves") at the same time.

Confusingly, Banks has also included several mainstays of the standard Hollywood Female Engagement genre, lots of hugging, and tears, and tears while hugging, and women supporting one another even during the obligatory dance scenes. Those female bonding sequences, a staple of the genre, feel forced here, as if Banks were scared to rely on the audience getting the idea without putting it in highlighter and underlining it several times over.

She pulls out as many stops as she can -- the film is peppered with cameos of recognizably famous people, including Michael Strahan, Ronda Rousey, Danica Patrick, and a former TV angel; she even employs a montage of women, young and old, doing archery, kayaking, weightlifting, and other cool stuff, over the opening credits, for cripes' sake -- while popping the endless soundtrack with a hyperactive assembly of bouncy current hits. She also keeps the pace relentlessly fast -- even at two hours, the angels are running around constantly, barely having time to catch their breath, and change clothes, before their next set-to -- but you get the impression she's much more comfortable in those sequences then the downtimes, where the relationships have to come to the fore.

It's in those moments, which should be the sustaining lifeblood of the film, where Banks still can't prevent her own script, too often swinging between grating and clumsy, from grinding down most of the good vibes. She knows what she wants it to be, but too many of the jokes fall painfully flat. Despite her best efforts, the characters barely rise above their cardboard TV roots, sending a mixed message to the young female viewers Banks is hoping to inspire. Her angels might kick more butt than their TV predecessors, but they still can't be trusted to carry a film on their own merits.

MovieStyle on 11/15/2019