Despite its allegiances to the gloriously tacky Seventies, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is very much a product of its time. Its month, practically. This second instalment of the movie franchise based on the TV series bears the imprint of The Matrix (in its fight scenes) and that of xXx (in the dab of extreme sports it is given). The first Charlie’s Angels movie was featherweight fun, the second is just as cheery, but somehow the whole effect rather palls. It suffers from sequel syndrome: the need to make what is basically a remix of the first movie, while also providing more. Full Throttle certainly provides more — more daft costumes, more cartoony hand-to-hand combat, and more cheesy wisecracks. Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz are the resurrected angels. They are gorgeous, deadly and when it comes to the mind they are of course all rocket scientists. Barrymore and Diaz do the ditzy dame thing to the hilt, while Liu does oriental inscrutability. In this movie, the trio of gals, guided by their unseen boss Charlie (voice of John Forsythe) and assisted by his lieutenant Bosley (voice of Bernie Mac), have to do something about a missing pair of rings encoded with secret information. Further than that you don’t need to know, as the rest is a mishmash of old plot-points, going back probably as far as Fu Manchu or Flash Gordon (when it was still in black and white). You’ve seen it all before, though perhaps not quite so swiftly jumbled. It doesn’t really matter what’s going on, because it’s a vehicle for the set-pieces, the clothes and the action, including some wigs and disguises almost as silly as the plot. The breakneck pace just about manages to keep boredom at bay, although the experience is rather like being subjected to two hours’ worth of Tom and Jerry cartoons. It’s all a big send-up, but this movie seems less self-referentially ironic than the last. Mostly it just seems ridiculous, and not as funny. There’s some half-hearted innuendo in the conversations between Liu and John Cleese (hopefully well-paid for a minuscule cameo), but it’s like the Reader’s Digest version of a Carry On film. Full Throttle does feature both Bruce Willis (briefly) and Demi Moore (more fully), so it has that curiosity value, if nothing else. Moore persuasively demonstrates that she looks almost as good as Diaz, who is half her age, in a bikini. We can breathe a sigh of relief — at last, one of those “strong woman” roles Moore has been pleading for. Like so many of the movies drawing on (or, in this case, practically parodying) Eastern martial arts films, Full Throttle‘s fight scenes are more about flying through the air and being able to perform backflips from a standing position than they are about any resemblance to real-life punching and kicking. There is no blood, just the exaggerated sound effects that are surely descended from the garish notations of comic strips. This is candyfloss violence, violence for kids. And, given the amount of firm young flesh on display, it’s also soft porn for kids.Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is light-hearted holiday fun, I suppose, and should not be asked to bear the weight of too much thought. In fact, I find myself unable to think about it any longer. Let’s just say that it’s the sequel to the movie of the TV series, and it’s more of the same, only more so.