Charlie's Angels is not the type of movie that invokes deep thought in its audience, nor does it pretend to be. It does, however, strike you as a fun movie: fun to make and fun to watch. It's a movie that's not about character development or engaging plot twists; it's about action, beautiful women getting into scrapes with bad guys and narrowly escaping from explosions.
It is a kinder, gentler type of action movie, however. None of the heroines ever resort to using guns, taking out the villains instead with nicely timed kicks and jabs. The women, rather than being the hapless victims waiting for rescue, are the ones kicking butt and taking names. The bad guys are the only ones who kill, and they are always brought to justice for their crimes.
The plot, such as it is, is simple. A software tycoon is kidnapped by a competitor, and the women of the Charles Townsend Detective Agency are hired to find him. The few twists in the story are rather obvious to see, and most of the time they rely on blatant exposition to explain. Character development is similarly shallow, as scenes involving Lucy Liu's reluctance to lie to her boyfriend about her job, Cameron Diaz's dreams of being a good dancer and Drew Barrymore growing up without a father only briefly give us insight into the lives of the Angels before the girls must chase down the next villain.
But plot is not what you expect to get when you see the trailers for this film. You expect action, and the movie delivers it. It's action of the type that has quickly become the trend in Hollywood, slowed-down bullets flying through the air juxtaposed with quickly paced fistfights. By the end of the film, this Matrix style of action might be beginning to get on your nerves, but luckily the film puts enough breaks in the action that you never get too bored with it.
Some of the action sequences are completely pointless, such as a car chase involving Cameron Diaz and "creepy thin guy" Crispin Glover. Other scenes rely solely on coincidence or luck for the girls to continue on their quest, like the compund bow that somehow just happens to end up lying on the ground next to the Angels, without which the final chase could not go on, or a character's knowledge of bird calls, heretofore unknown to the audience, allowing the girls to find the enemy's secret headquarters. But focusing on such instances would be overanalyzing a movie that exists simply to entertain.
Most of the fun with this movie comes from its cheesy sense of humor. Bill Murray's Bosley is around just to be goofy and get the audience to laugh; one scene in which Bosley is captured by the villains and must occupy himself in the jail cell was designed to allow Murray's comedic talents to shine. Scenes involving Cameron Diaz dancing on stage at Soul Train and Drew Barrymore dropping naked from the sky into the laps of two teenage boys serve to further remind the audience that this is not a movie to be taken seriously.
So should you be looking for a thought-provoking film, you might want to go see something else. But if you simply want to go to the movies, turn off your brain for a while and have fun, then Charlie's Angels is the movie for you.
