I went to Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle instead of any of the male action movies because the trailer suggested it wouldn't take itself seriously. Male action movies always expect you to get caught up in the suspense to some degree, not just in the whole arc of the plot, but in the details--will he get into the building, will he get out of the building, will he get away in the snazzy car or the helicopter or whatever. With technique like Brian DePalma's, say in Mission: Impossible (1996), you can make the moviemaking a thing of beauty to contemplate, but you can't expect an intelligent person to really get involved. Even the jokers among the male action crowd, Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Paul Verhoeven, most notably, expect you to get pumped.
Full Throttle throws all that away. The first Charlie's Angels (2000), also directed by McG and starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu as the three beautiful superagents, was campily aware of the tiredness of recycling old TV shows, but still treated it as a relatively straightforward assignment. It had a "real" plot and long-strand action-suspense sequences. In Full Throttle when the girls need to get into a building there's much less concern with how they get in, they just get in, wearing absurd costumes and with facetious musical cues. (The goatherd song from The Sound of Music that plays when they're in disguise as nuns is so insistent as to be demented.) The suspense in action movies is cheesy because you know the big set pieces are faked, down to the timing, and the characters are endowed with inhuman physical endurance (especially to absorb blows). Full Throttle never asks you to engage with the plot at this micro level, because you know, as you always do, that everything will sort itself out, and at the macro level the plot barely makes any sense so you can let it go, too.
This holiday from the pretense to rationality feels much more plugged in to what gives me pleasure. The actors are incredibly good-looking, real body gods. Not just the three stars, but most of the bad guys, too, including Demi Moore, whose sinewy physique works well with her smoky buzz of a voice, all slightly ominous come-on, and Justin Theroux as a lean, muscly dream of a bad boyfriend. The movie isn't just unconcerned with being convincing, it's openly, ludicrously nonchalant, a festive comedy of an action movie. And in addition to the crazy music cues, it has a couple of dance sequences, one in which the girls demonstrate that all their joints are oiled and working, and one that's a sensuous mini-video for Edwyn Collins's "A Girl Like You" as Moore prepares for her climactic crime. (McG's credits include the Gap khaki ad featuring line dancers set to Dwight Yoakam's rendition of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and some of the brightest, most enjoyable videos of the late '90s, including Sugar Ray's "Fly" and "Every Morning" (both of which he also co-wrote), Fastball's "The Way," Smash Mouth's "Walkin' On the Sun" and "All Star," The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" and "Why Don't You Get a Job," and Barenaked Ladies' "One Week.") Sex, comedy, music: once you buy your food at the concession stand what else is there to want?
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