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June 30, 2003

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Charlie's Angels! Charlie's Angels! Although

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Charlie's Angels! Charlie's Angels! Although it didn't do as well opening weekend as the first CA, I contend that it is a much better movie. The creators seem to understand more clearly what function the Charlie's Angels movies serve in these dark, bitter times: they offer pure overstimulating eye candy, cool outfits, even more tits, ass, and hair swooshing around in slow motion than the first one, a boost to Journey's back catalog record sales, and Justin Theroux with his glasses off.

This movie was also much more self-aware: references to The Return of the Jedi (angels bursting naked out of the ceramic,) Raiders of the Lost Ark (drinking contest in Mongolia,) The Jerk, and its own television series. Also it generally had a more even level of comedy: everyone was jumping around and freaking out in the same hyper-active frenzy, which was an improvement over the stick-in-the-mud-ness of Bill Murray. He's funny, but he's no Bernie Mac, who operates much better in a movie like this.

Speaking of which, Bernie Mac's racial stereotype jokes were funny in themselves, but that kind of humor felt out of place in a movie like Charlie's Angels. As Ebert says, the Black Irish jokes were funny, as was his delivery of "It's raining white women", but overall, those jokes operated on another level of parody than the rest of the movie. CA was all giggly smirky winks and hot-pants-clad ass shaking, while Bernie Mac's jokes were more Chris Tucker, so questionable you can't help but shake your head and laugh. It didn't quite work.

Hey, and remember all the gossip surrounding the casting problems and script writing problems and Lucy Liu fighting with everyone on the set and hating her co-stars problems of the first movie? And how Thandie Newton, Victoria Beckham (then Adams), and Gwynnie were all considered for the role of the Third Angel? They've really gone to great lengths this time to at least appear like everyone loves each other.

However, I haven't laughed that hard and consistently at a movie in the theater since the opening weekends of Zoolander and the first Austin Powers. The opening "...and now they work for me. My name is Charlie" sequence was the most hilarious thing I've seen in a theater all year. It's worth seeing on the big screen-- eye candy works best when it's overwhelmingly big.

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posted by amy at 10:03 AM | #

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