Ah, blissful anodyne to indie film angst! That would be Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, which the 'Fesser and I watched last night. I must admit, I kept shrieking with glee at all the boldfaced steals from other movies: Drew throwing down shots just like Karen Allen in the Nepal drinking contest in Raiders, girl welders a la Flashdance, a creeptastic villian straight out of the Cape Fear remake, an Angel-on-Angel showdown at the Griffith Park Observatory from Rebel without a Cause, and a saucy, risque Fosse-style cabaret number that had me looking for Shirley and Chita and Stubby, even.
Yes, Demi Moore sucked, and Bernie Mac's role was so retrograde it made Ernie Hudson's character in Ghostbusters almost twenty years ago seem progressive by comparision. But the onslaught of cameos was great--where else would you get to see Carrie Fisher shrug into the habit of the Penguin from the Blues Brothers so many years after Jake Blues pushed her face down in the muddy sewer? Plus, a blonde Asian cowgirl and Cameron Diaz in the best bull-dyke mullett ever. I suspect Gwyneth Paltrow could learn a few things from the Angels about really reveling in being young, beautiful, and well compensated without feeling compelled to suffer--and tell us that she's suffering--for her art.
CA: FT is what Graham Greene would have called an entertainment, to be sure. But it is just as obviously in love with the movies. Yet how to explain my joyful abandon in the face of such hyper-calculated Hollywood detritus?
The 'Fesser reminded me that Anthony Lane had struggled with this problem in his review of The Saint. It's true. Lane pins it down in the lede, when he describes a scene
that may, in time, come to be viewed as a critical moment in American movies.... As the action unfolded, I sat there with my jaw resting lightly on the floor, and I thought, This is it. This is what we have been heading for all these years. Here is a film that makes no sense at all. That is no reason, of course, not to see it. On the contrary, there's something rather bracing in the thought that [the studio] chose to offload enormous sums of money on what is essentially a dadaist experiment.
I'll say. In fact, fuck it--I can't wait to watch Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle again. And indie cred be damned.
