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11/03/00- Updated 09:44 AM ET
 

Sorry, Charlie, these 'Angels' don't soar

By Mike Clark, USA TODAY

Charlie's Angels
3 of a heavenly kind
Movie is devilish in its details
Look backward, Angels: New trio mirrors the first
Here's looking at you, Angels!

For possibly the first time since the studio system's heyday, a big-studio movie has found a way to get two of its leads into belly-dancing costumes.

In Charlie's Angels, however, this midriff undulation lasts only long enough for the writers to get bored. Then they speed on to the next situation —- kung fu fighting, auto racing, cooking mishaps and, of course, sexual teasing. All are given equal weight in this noisy spinoff of the ABC series, which spends 92 minutes indulging in scattershot whims.

Completely forgettable, it also is bearable and occasionally breezy — though how good can any movie be when its big-screen reference points are The Brady Bunch Movie at the top and The Mod Squad in the sewer?

Kicked off by a promisingly amusing spoof of Mission: Impossible 2's opening airplane sequence, this fluff piece finds Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu taking over the reigns and brains (such as they are) from the prototypes played by Farrah, Kate, Jaclyn and their successors. Bill Murray re-creates the role of Bosley, and not since his straight role in The Razor's Edge has Murray been given so little to do comedically.

Charlie's Angels

out of four

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Bill Murray, Sam Rockwell, Tim Curry, Kelly Lynch

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Director: McG

Rating: PG-13 for action violence, innuendo, some sensuality/nudity

The case he and boss Charlie assign begins with the abduction of a computer mogul played by Sam Rockwell, an actor who initially entices Barrymore's character with the sweetness he displayed in 1996's Box of Moonlight (as opposed to his psycho-creepiness in The Green Mile).

Though the villains are never what they initially seem, the heroines are. Diaz is a golden-girl ditz who fulfills her desire to appear on Soul Train; Barrymore is a trouble-magnet who can be counted on to roll naked down a hill; and Liu is the one who deals in bombs both professionally (the ones she defuses) and at home (the ones that come out of her kitchen).

All three seem to have Flubber in their shoes, leaping to the ceiling during done-to-death fight scenes that are so Matrix-derivative in their otherworldly choreography that it's more depressing than exhilarating. The music is heavily '70s and '80s, with a little '60s tossed in, and it pumps up a hybrid that's sometimes funny, sometimes tedious, always silly and steadily self-consciously knowing.

Yet, if you recall, the TV show was not the stuff of Life Achievement Awards (if you need a reminder, there's a DVD now out). So perhaps it's to these Angels' credit that they, like the movie, are at least intermittent fun.





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