Angels in purgatory

>> Charlie's Angels hit the big screen, with mixed results

by MATTHEW HAYS

Were it not for the massive chunk of coin he is undoubtedly being handed for his efforts, one might almost feel some sympathy for McG, the director behind the big-screen version of Charlie's Angels. After all, expectations run high. The thing has been appraised at over the $80-million mark (yes, of course I mean in U.S. dollars), there are three major young stars involved (Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore, who co-produced) and Matrix choreographer Cheun-Yan Yuen handling the fight sequences.

Not to mention the considerable cultural baggage that accompanies the original show. Blathering on about Charlie's Angels in the press kit, the film's producer, Leonard Goldberg, says, "It may have been the beginning of the empowerment of women within popular culture." I wouldn't go quite that far, but it did leave an indelible impression upon our cultural psyche. As a few critics pointed out, Charlie's Angels represented the perfect pitch between tits and ass and feminism. These women were barely-clad babes, but they also had the power and had non-traditional, high-kicking jobs.

Thus McG, the one-named music-video director handed this project (no, he bears no relation to McDonald's, though that's a good guess), surely felt the pressure. And, if he must be scored on this task--and he must--I'd give him a decidedly mixed grade. After averaging everything out, I'd say a six out of 10 overall.

Hark the hair of angels sing

Let's start with the most important things. It was once argued that Charlie's Angels was really a show primarily about hair. And I'd concur. Launched in '76, the height of an era of big hair, the show made Farrah Fawcett's ludicrous feathered look an internationally acknowledged trademark do. The new trio don't fare so well in this category. Particularly offensive is Diaz's lifeless broom of straw, a head of hair that could never inspire anyone to imitation, unless they're interested in attracting the neighbourhood's stray cats when in heat.

In a scene at the race track, Barrymore recreates Fawcett's famous do, offering up a few moments that almost redeem the film's hair let-down. But not quite. At other times, Barrymore's messy rat's nest of a hair-do is irritating: damn it, Aaron Spelling never would have allowed any of the original angels to wander around with hair this unkempt.

In the plot department, things are rather stupid. But that gets McG good marks, seeing as the original series always shied away from anything resembling depth, dimension or surprise. As with the Brady Bunch movies, the movie references the old show by picking up bits and pieces of old episodes: an angel falling for a client, one of the team getting kidnapped, the angels finally almost meeting the elusive Charlie. The fact that any plot is held together at all is sort of amazing in itself, considering the film's producers have now acknowledged that the screenplay went through 30 different writers (and that's just the figure they're acknowledging, which means the actual number is probably closer to 3,000).

Mean fighting mad

The fight department is saved by Yuen, the man behind the Matrix stunts, who, hopefully, got paid several million for this. Lord knows, he deserves it. The fight scenes are gorgeously choreographed, with angels taking flight and kicking ass in movements that evoke the finest dance manoeuvres you've ever witnessed. This is the brand-new element of the movie, and it works beautifully.

Where the film gets really shoddy grades is for its yuk-yuk factor. There are a series of groan-worthy gags involving Liu's cooking, after Barrymore throws one of her muffins against the wall, and it breaks through the drywall. (Get it? She can't cook!) Tom Green--who should have been a sure thing--also wasted in some poker-faced delivery of absurd lines, none of which fly.

McG also misses some primo ops to take shots at the old series' tragic writing. What about a few knowing looks between the gals as they figure out key points of the mystery they're busy solving? Why not send up the show's zany central contradiction: the fact that the trio were always "good girls," while also undeniably playing up their t-and-a factor? McG never takes aim at these potentially hilarious targets.

So Charlie's Angels is a very, very mixed bag: bad hair, good fights, okay plot, sordid laffs. It's neither heavenly Brady nor hellishly Mod Squad. Instead, the angels have landed somewhere in purgatory.

Charlie's Angels opens Friday, Nov. 3