One of the first things to be shown on South African television after its inauguration in the mid-Seventies was Charlie’s Angels – the post-Farrah Fawcett-Majors version, though I’m sure I recall that, too, from earlier shorts shown along with home movies. What I definitely do remember is that every opportunity was taken in that programme to get the girls doing karate-style kicks while wearing bikinis.
The new movie of Charlie’s Angels is winkingly aware of its status as a retread of a piece of Seventies kitsch. Near the start of the film, travellers on an aeroplane are about to be shown TJ Hooker: The Movie. One of them complains – “Another movie from an old TV show!” “What are you going to do?” asks the person next to him. The first replies: “Walk out.”
The business of updating pop-classic shows for a new era is indeed a tricky one. Witness the disaster that was The Avengers, which has to be one of the worst films ever made by people with an actual career in Hollywood. It simply could not achieve that delicate balance of send-up and credible action that the genre requires. Irony is essential, but then so are some genuine thrills, or the film turns into mere flaccid campery.
Charlie’s Angels, written by Ben Roberts and directed by the laconically named McG (code name for one Joseph McGinty Nichol), manages to fulfil its mandate splendidly. From the opening credits, which parody those of the TV show, to its explosive finale, it provides self-conscious wit, deliciously over-the-top visuals (including that Seventies fad, split-screen), and some stirring cartoony action.
The three crime-fighting angels, Natalie, Alex and Dylan, are played by Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore respectively. (Barrymore also co-produces, in case you were worrying she was just another pretty face.) The girls – forgive me, but “women” seems unnecessarily earnest – are neatly individuated, with the somewhat ditzy Natalie illumined by Diaz’s goofy grin, Liu sending up her inscrutable-oriental persona from Ally McBeal, and Barrymore doing sweet and sexy for all she’s worth, which is a lot.
Between the costume changes, the disguises and the set-piece fights (shot in the slow/fast style of John Woo, in which the girls seem able practically to fly – and from which they emerge, like superheroes, unscathed but for the odd appealing smear of dirt), there are also some amusing parodies of other action films. Mission Impossible gets a sly ribbing here and there, and the techno-hokum so beloved of the James Bond movies is used skilfully and sparingly – unlike the recent Mission Impossible and Bond movies, which had so much gadgetry that the humans, admittedly rather characterless ones already, were quite overshadowed. Charlie’s Angels also has a nice line in the kind of double entendre that the Seventies Bond movies pioneered.
Bill Murray, as the angels’ overseer Bosley, is very funny; Tim Curry, as a mogul who may be involved in nefarious deeds, is good, too. Sam Rockwell and Kelly Lynch, as the clients who set it all in motion, also pull their weight, though none of them would have been able to do a damn thing without a decent script. The wall-to-wall music, with a wide range of songs featuring angels of one kind or another, may be a little too insistent, and we could have done without Rod Stewart, but the soundtrack pumps when required. Using The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up for a scene in which the girls trounce a male villian is rather witty.
Charlie’s Angels is supremely silly and mightily enjoyable; for a moment, one feels 12 again.