Tag: charlie’s angels

The Deadly Angels

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★★½
“At the risk of repeating myself, poster not necessarily representative of movie contents.”

Inspired though the alternate titling of The Bod Squad might be, the original title likely gives a better idea of the inspiration for this 1977 Shaw Brothers flick: think Charlie’s rather than deadly. Three women, from Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, under the orders of Bosley Scotland Yard’s Miss Eve (Kraft, known to cult fans from Mighty Peking Man), go undercover in a night-club. Girls from there have been recruited to smuggle out of Hong Kong the proceeds from a series of brutal jewel robberies – the previous couriers all turn up stabbed to death after delivering the goods. However, the agents turn out to be a bit crap at the whole undercover thing, and the bad guys are none too happy to discover undercover operatives in their midst.

The main problem is, this takes way to long to get to the action. Outside of a pretty decent training sequence, there’s very little to speak of for the first hour. The film tries to make up in sex, what it doesn’t deliver in violence, with plenty of nudity and coercive sex, but the only point of note is an impressive death by fire extinguisher, inflicted on a witness by the chief villain’s main squeeze (Shaw Yin Yin, one of the decade’s leading erotic actresses in Hong Kong).

Things do perk up in the final reel, with a series of pretty decent battles, in which the girls take on a host of minions, with a little help from Li (Liu), whose father was the one who got “extinguished” (and who, like most Hong Kong martial artists of the time, appears to be trying to channel the very busy spirit of the late Bruce Lee). The agents also have some neat gadgets, such as a belt-buckle that become a spiked yo-yo kind of weapon, a folding cross-bow and a hair scrunchie which forms part of an explosive slingshot. More of these being put to use, and less of victims being slapped around, would have upped the entertainment quotient. You can see the influence this would have on 80’s entries in the genre, but at this point, we’re still talking “barely crawled out of the sea” in evolutionary terms.

Dir: Hun Choi, Hsueh Li Pao
Star: Nancy Yen, Dana, Liu Yang, Evelyn Kraft

Carlito’s Angels

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★★
“Do we really need a ghetto, microbudget version of Charlie’s Angels? But then, did we really need the TV reboot?”

In many ways, this is wretched beyond belief, crippled by near non-existent production values and likely only to appeal to those who live in the urban culture depicted. And yet… For every moment of wince-inducing idiocy [Agustin appears to be a big fan of Benny Hill, using speeded-up footage for “humourous” effect more than once], there were moments of surreal charm. For instance, “Captions for the Hispanic-impaired,” or the really terrible fight scene which breaks the fourth wall, turning into a “making of” segment which (and I can attest to this) accurately depicts the hell of being a microbudget moviemaker. Or that the large family of children belonging to one of the Angels includes a bearded midget. “He just showed up one day. Hey, he buys groceries, it’s cool” is her casual explanation.

As you’d expect, it’s a spoof, with the three leading ladies living in Harlem, and as in the original, getting their orders from Charlie by phone – except, here, that’s because he’s locked up in jail. While sent undercover at a strip-club, supposedly to track down some white girl whose sleeping with a local guy, they overhear their landlord Big Lou (Reynosa) getting a loan from the Mafia guy who owns the club. He promises to pay the loan back by fixing the “boleta,” the local numbers game. They’re not going to tolerate this attack on an integral part of their culture, so have to stop him and his associate, Triple Gauge, before they can bring this heinous plot to completion.

Credit the three leads for giving their all, attacking their characters with a great deal of energy, that helps overcome some of the obvious limitations. I’m pretty sure a lot of cultural references went whizzing way above my head, but as the kids say, I’m “down” enough [Phoenix is pretty Hispanic] to be able to get a good chunk. The plot is pretty awful, the action falls short of even the 1970’s original version, and there’s way too much yapping, of a style generally seen on afternoon talk-shows. But there’s a sense the people involved have genuine enthusiasm, and made it for the love of film-making. At barely an hour between (rather nifty) comic-book styled opening credits and (entirely unfunny) bloopers which close things out, it can hardly be accused of overstaying its welcome. I probably enjoyed it more than the grade above suggests, but I own the very substantial tolerance for poverty-row productions required; your reaction will likely depend on that.

Dir: Agustin
Star: Evly Pacheco, Alessandra Ramos, Jeni Garcia, Raymond Reynosa

The (Short) Life and (Quick) Death of Charlie’s Angels

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Well, that didn’t take long. While not quite the first new show on the fall 2011 schedule to get cancelled, the Charlie’s Angels reboot did survive much longer. After scathing reviews and ratings that were weak to begin with, and went downhill from there, not even a spot of same-sex canoodling on set could shore things up. Four weeks in, ABC pulled the plug. Let’s start with those reviews, shall we?

  • “ABC’s new drama Charlie’s Angels seem to want to go back to the ’70s to rustle up some girl power, but it fails miserably and offensively… It contains some of the worst acting of the last decade on network television, much of it by Minka Kelly. The writing is atrocious… It sets the standards of television back to, well, the lesser efforts of the 1970s. And that’s nostalgia nobody needs to relive.” – Hollywood Reporter
  • “A cluttered, poorly acted, ridiculously predictable wannabe action show with an alarming wardrobe budget and few surprises… Would be better if it was faster-paced, grittier, and the characters should be more flawed – because that’s how audiences like their heroes in the new millenium.” – Starpulse.com
  • “A silly hour of escapism even less believable than Vampire Diaries. If you were looking for something witty or sly, I think you were out of luck.” – Entertainment Weekly
  • “It’s unlikely anyone expected much from a revival of that eye-candy progenitor Charlie’s Angels; the surprise is that you’re getting so little… [The original] had energy and glamour and a self-aware sense of frothy fun, all of which are missing from this lugubrious update.” – USA Today
  • “The truly and genuinely terrible acting…is hard to separate from the execrable script they’ve been saddled with… It feels like pre-chewed food: intended for easy digestion, it comes out (1) unappetizing, (2) textureless, and (3) devoid of character.” – NPR

It could perhaps have withstood these barbs, if it hadn’t been for the poor ratings. 8.76 million viewers watched the Sept. 22 premiere, leaving it third in the timeslot, with less than half the audience for CBS and Fox’s offerings. That was disappointing enough, but it lost 19% of its audience the following episode, and by week three, it was down below six million. The death-knell was that, among the 18-49 year old demographic key to advertisers, Angels was on a mere 4% of the TVs in use during its time slot.

I watched the show, albeit out of a sense of duty more than real expectation; I loved the first of Drew Barrymore’s movies, but was unimpressed with the sequel, and the series seemed to fall uncomfortably between paying homage to the original, and being in tone with modern action heroine mores. Said creator Alfred Gough, “It won’t be campy or retro. The characters are real and emotionally grounded, but they still like to have fun, wear great clothes, solve crime and kick some serious ass.” And, unfortunately, take orders without question from an unseen male boss. While the makers could hardly dump that, it’s an angle that now comes off as less whimsical than creepy and stalkerish.

This illustrates a tension that couldn’t be adequately resolved. They killed an Angel with a car-bomb early in the first episode, but the show also had silly banter about handbags, and the results possessed an unevenness of tone that dogged things for the entire run. Trying to balance dark and light on television is a lot harder than it looks, and few shows manage to do so effectively; those in charge here should have watched and taken copious notes from Burn Notice, which does this much better (and is also set in Miami).

Mind you, they’d be hampered given there’s little indication of any significant acting talent among the lead trio, whose laughter seemed perpetually forced and who gave their characters little in the way of distinct personalities. I also have to wonder if making them all ex-criminals – rather than underutilized cops, as in the original – made it harder to empathize with them. However, there is also a lot more competition among action heroines these days; when the original aired, kick-ass chicks (even to the limited degree in Angels) were rare. Now: not so much, and Nikita or Sidney Bristow would eat up and spit out the entire trio, picking their teeth with the bones.


That said, the series was not without its moments, and the action, though sporadic, was generally okay – they did at least use guns, despite the presence of Drew Barrymore as a producer. Ironically, the last episode before the death sentence was handed down, was probably the best. This was a loose remake of a cult favorite from the original series, Angels in Chains, which saw the trio thrown into a Cuban prison being used as a source of women for a call-girl ring (I’m sure that was also the plot of a full-on exploitation pic, but I’m damned if I can remember the name). It benefited from a good supporting cast: Erica Durance as a CIA agent, Elizabeth Pena as the prison warden and James Morrison (who played Jack Bauer’s boss Bill Buchanan in 24) as a corrupt businessman.

But I can’t confess to feeling upset in the slightest that it has gone, beyond a sense of vague disappointment that any series involving action heroines has bitten the dust – there aren’t enough on broadcast TV. I’m sure it’ll be used as “proof” that these shows just don’t work, but the problem here was less the concept than the execution. While not the worst remake attempt to come out of Hollywood lately (no-one who saw Knight Rider will argue!), it was a poorly-conceived adaptation of a show that truly was a product of its era, and should have been left as such.

Chai Lai Angels

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★★★
“If you only watch one Thai Charlie’s Angels knock-off this year…”

66% extra free! That’s the major difference here, as five, rather than three, little girls, who get their orders from an unseen “boss” and his faux Bosley, take on a variety of disguises and kick butt, in between romantic dalliances. Of course, with a budget approximately one-eightieth of the Hollywood version, certain economies have to be expected. But there are unexpected bonuses in the lunatic invention department, such as the when the villainous henchmen drops a cage, out of nowhere, onto four of our Angels, only for the fifth to come to their rescue, for no apparent reason either, in a tank. At moments like this, you can only laugh with the film.

The plot is a nonsensical as ever. They are assigned to protect little girl Miki, who knows the location of a pearl worth billions of bahts, which also maintains the balance of the oceans [See! It’s a film with an important message!]. When they fail to do so, they then have to rescue her from the evil Dragon, who intends to sell off the pearl to the highest bidder. He has an army of bumbling minions, the main one of whom is a thoroughly unconvincing transvestite, assisted by a cross-eyed underling whose aim poses more of a threat to anyone but the target. Yeah, the humour goes for all the difficult targets. It’s probably funnier to a Thai audience: one senses from the comic timing there are pauses for laughs where no Western audience will find any.

The action is plentiful, if occasionally wobbly. Ektawatkul, as Pouy-sian (Crown of Thorns), comes across best, as you’d expect from an actual Tae Kwon Do champion, but also doing her own stunts in a car-chase sequence. I did appreciate the editing, which manages to keep things coherent even when there are four or five separate fights going on – The Expendables could learn a lot there. Miki might have the best wire-assisted kung-fu moves; she’s a bit like Hit Girl without the swearing. There’s also a fight scene where the Angels are wearing towels, though this is strictly PG-rated. Like the rest of the film it’s harmless but entertaining fluff, at its best when it parodies the conventions of the genre, e.g. when one of the Angels only fires her gun in ridiculous poses, such as through her legs. While not quite enough to become Undercover Brother, it passes the time painlessly enough.

Dir: Poj Arnon
Star: Jintara Poonlarp, Bongkoj Khongmalai, Supakson Chaimongkol, Kessarin Ektawatkul

Charlie’s Angels (original TV pilot)

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★★½
“Once upon a time, there were three little girls…”

I suppose my main surprise is how pedestrian this was. Action? Hardly anything to speak of at all, despite the credit sequence which shows them training as police officers. The story has them going undercover at a vineyard, whose owner vanished seven years ago, and is about to be declared legally-dead: his ex-wife (Muldaur) and the sleazy foreman will clean up…unless the daughter, also missing, shows up. Of course, the Angels play both a fake daughter (Smith) and the ‘real’ thing (Jackson) – the former is designed to be exposed, in order to get herself involved with the wife and foreman, and reveal what’s going on. Quite cunning, really.

Cunning, yes – exciting…not so much, unfortunately. It plays mostly like the TV movie it is, and is never more than fluffy, warm-hearted entertainment at best. It’s somewhat interesting to note the presence of David Ogden Stiers as another of Charlie’s henchmen, a role later dropped for the actual series, where Bosley was deemed sufficient for all normal purposes. However, the biggest shock is perhaps an unknown Tommy Lee Jones, playing a childhood friend of the heiress, who threatens to expose the Angels’ plot. He probably gets more screen time than Fawcett-Majors, who is barely used at all in this episode: she gets one real scene of note, an entertaining performance as a backwoods bimbo luring the bad guys into buying her land, on the basis they think it’s loaded with oil.

Otherwise, it’s hard to say why this became one of the most successful series of its time, running for five seasons and 110 episodes, as well as spawning [albeit twenty years later] a pair of Hollywood motion pictures. Even those expecting a full-on jiggle-fest will be very disappointed, as the costumes here are more functional than anything: the most skin is shown by whichever of Charlie’s babes is handing him a drink – and I have to say, the whole concept of women unquestionably accepting orders from an unseen Father-figure seems more creepy and patronising than anything else. The 1970’s were a different time, however, and it’s not really fair to judge work from another era by our own standards of morality. On the other hand, this is only sporadically entertaining and slowly-paced, and that seems an entirely reasonable criticism.

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Stars: Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smith, Diana Muldaur

The Doll Squad

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★★
“Less an inspiration for Charlie’s Angels than the early works of Andy Sidaris.”

To describe this as eagerly anticipated would be… well, wholly wrong, actually. I’ll tell you how long the DVD has sat on our shelf: I bought it on honeymoon; we got married in July 2002. Not exactly required viewing, then. And having seen it, I can see why: while not as bad as we feared from the trailer, it’s remarkably dull. Mikels claims the concept was stolen by the creators of Charlie’s Angels, but going by the execution here, the word he’s looking for would appear to be “rescued”, not stolen. Sabrina Kincaid (York) assembles an all-girl team to find and take out the evil mastermind who’s blowing up American rockets. Quite why they must be girls is never quite explained; it’s down to Big Bertha, the government computer that assigns missions, and apparently values fashion sense over ability.

It’s really the middle where this falls apart, among near-endless scenes of the team running around an island in jumpsuits and white, high-heeled boots, getting captured, escaping and running around again. This is, as it sounds, remarkably dull, and outside of Sabrina, no attempt is made to give any of the other members any significant character traits. That’s a shame, especially since you’ve got Tura Satana, one of the most memorable action heroines of all time in Faster Pussycat. Here’s she’s reduced to a pastie-wearing cypher, who provides the film’s entire, insignificant skin quota. If you’re hoping this film makes up for in nudity what it lacks in most other areas, you’ll be disappointed.

There are some minor pleasures to be had: York isn’t bad, and her team has no qualms about dropping someone, then adding a bullet or two for good measure [Though this isn’t necessary when you feed them high-explosive liquor] And the soundtrack is perhaps the best thing about the film, being 91 minutes of Grade-A, seventies cheese. However, on the whole, this is more a chore than a pleasure, and Mikels doesn’t do much here to redeem his name as one of the poorer B-movie directors of the time.

Dir: Ted V. Mikels
Stars: Francine York, Michael Ansara, Sherri Vernon, Tura Satana

Martial Angels

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★★★½
“HK spin on Charlie’s Angels, with more babes but less humour.”

martialangelsAs the title suggests, this owes more than a little to a certain big-budget blockbuster of early 2001, especially in its storyline of a plot to steal software in order to ransom a kidnapped boyfriend. It differs in a heroine who is a former career criminal, a broader range of characters (I think there were seven “angels” in all – but they kept moving around, so it was hard to be sure) and a much darker feel, particularly in the creepy subplot about the lecherous cracksman (Terence Yin) they have to bust out of jail, who takes a shine to one of the group. On the lighter side, the token lesbian Monkey (they’re all nicknamed after animals) has to woo a programmer, played by exploito-director Wong Jing, which is more in keeping with its American inspiration.

While not particularly memorable, especially compared to Ford’s classic Naked Killer, this is untaxing fun with a decent quantity (if not perhaps quality) of action. It even actually contains guns, sadly absent from Drew Barrymore’s PC version. Save Westerner Rosemary Vandenbroucke, who is probably a foot taller, you may find the seven angels blurring together, and you can see why Heroic Trio was wise to stop at three. But this film provides a comfortable place to nestle if you’re not looking for anything to stretch the brain.

Dir: Clarence Ford
Star: Hsu Chi, Kelly Lam, Julian Cheung, Sandra Ng

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

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ca2a★★
“2 Fast, 2 Furious.”

A sequel to one of the most successful action heroine films of all time was perhaps inevitable, but this proves the difficulty of catching lightning in a bottle. What seemed light and breezy, an effortless concoction of bubbly entertainment, first time around, now appears forced and contrived. Put simply, it tries too hard, and as a result is significantly less successful than the original.

This time, the heroines are tracking down the villain responsible for stealing two rings that give access to the database of the Federal Witness Protection Program [note to government: I recommend not storing sensitive information on something quite so easily stolen] It hits close to home, since before becoming an Angel, Dylan (Barrymore) was given a new identity through the program. The Irish gangster she jailed (Theroux) is now out, and after her blood, as well as the rings.

ca2bThen there’s Demi Moore as a former Angel, now gone bad – which might be a shock if it hadn’t been promoted in every puff piece about the movie. Hey, at least she gets to use a gun, again otherwise mysteriously absent from the Angels’ world. Her role is smaller than you might expect, but unfortunately, is not the only bit of stunt casting. With a deep breath, we plunge in…

John Cleese, Bruce Willis, the Olsen twins, Pink, Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Robert Patrick, Eric Bogosian, Jaclyn Smith, Carrie Fisher… You get the concept? It’s my experience that films so burdened with celebrity cameos are usually trying to divert you from weaknesses elsewhere. The only one to make any impact is Cleese, as Alex’s father, who operates under the impression his daughter is a prostitute; his facial expressions as she describes taking on twelve sailors at once (and subsequent need for a shower) are the comic highlight of the film.

Speaking of comedy, Bernie Mac is largely unintelligible as the new Bosley, making you yearn for the subtlety (or, at least, audibility) of Bill Murray, and the film grinds completely to a halt so that the Angels can do a little dance number to M.C. Hammer. It’s not funny, and it’s not clever. After the Showgirls sequence – another showstopper in the worse sense of the word – you’ll be fairly sure all three are equally viable candidates as the ho. [See our review of the original if you need an explanation] Last time, the heroic trio had clearly differentiated personalities, but now, they seem like Barbie dolls with interchangeable heads, wardrobes and boyfriends.

ca2cI confess I did kinda enjoy watching the movie at the time, but as I’ve been writing this review, its grade has been steadily tumbling, since I can hardly remember anything positive to justify it. Oh, yes: Crispin Glover is back – inexplicably, since he died first time round, but he comes close to stealing the entire movie. We even get to see his background, which is as weird as you’d expect, and probably more entertaining than most of the film’s genuine plot-points. The start, with a Mongolian rescue mission, is also nicely done, but is about the only time where the costumes are more than pointless excess.

The action was one of the highlights of the first, thanks to a great deal of influence and help from Hong Kong. Here, it has some wonderful moments, but never works as a coherent whole – rarely do two seconds pass without some gimmicky piece of editing. The “extreme sports” focus is also weak: surfing, motocross, street luge, and boarding didn’t work in XXX, and they don’t work here, since you know full well the actresses were safely tucked away in their trailers, far from any risk or danger.

Rumour has it, Diaz demanded they shell out $200,000 to retouch her eyes digitally, making them bluer. They really would have been better spending the money on a less self-indulgent script. Despite much improved calendar position (June vs. November), this sequel made less money in its opening weekend than the original, and you can see why. There’s little point bothering with the new movie; you can just watch the original, turn the surround-sound up to 11, bury your head in the speakers and experience the same over-frenetic migraine that Full Throttle will cause.

Dir: McG
Stars: Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Justin Theroux

Charlie’s Angels (movie)

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★★★★
“…and then there’s the ho.”

Making movies based on a TV show is always fraught with danger. You’ve got to convince the audience to pay good money to see the same thing they can watch for free at home, yet you can’t stray too far from the central concept, or you’ll alienate the fans. One possible countermeasure is to go for an old show, less likely to have a rabid fanbase, which you can update safely. Yet this too is problematic: anyone see The Mod Squad?

Charlie’s Angels, however, avoids most of the pitfalls, and is a thoroughly enjoyable blast – little wonder it took more money at the box-office than almost any other female action movie in history. While not faultless (the lack of characterisation is particularly woeful), it never sets out to be any more than a good time, and in that capacity it succeeds admirably, mixing violence, sex and humour to optimum efficiency. The plot can be easily dismissed: the trio investigate a kidnapped computer tycoon, only to find things are not quite what they seem, as they uncover a plot to kill their unseen boss, Charlie. There – that’s that out of the way.

Almost as rapidly put aside are the lead characters: Alex (Liu), Natalie (Diaz), and Dylan (Barrymore). Margaret Cho once said – partly in reference to the original Charlie’s Angels TV series – that whenever you get three female friends, there’s the smart one, the pretty one…and then there’s the ho. True to form, the movie replicates this: Alex’s main scene has her as a ferocious efficiency expert, the main ambition for Natalie seems to be to appear on Soul Train (in a totally irrelevant but good-natured sequence), while Dylan beds the client without even reaching a “first date”. Work out which is which yourself. :-)

If there’s nothing there to keep you interested, the film makes up for it in lots of other ways. The aim was to make it seem like turning pages of a comic-book, and this certainly succeeds – there’s always something going on. While the nods to political correctness are kinda irritating (the villain and all his henchmen can muster precisely one gun between them), no-one is really taking it seriously, and the tongue-in-cheek approach saves the whole thing. The supporting cast are good, too: Bill Murray as their overseer is his usual laconic self, while Kelly Lynch and Crispin Glover give good support to Sam Rockwell.

The film manages to capture the spirit of the original show, without being a slave to it. I appreciated the nods to its predecessor e.g. the voice of Charlie being the same actor, and I believe even the speakerphone was the very one used on the TV show! The soundtrack, similarly, is a nice mix of old and new, though points must be deducted for the film being partly responsible for inflicting Destiny’s Child on the universe at large.

 It is, however, the action scenes which stand out and, frankly, make up for the film’s deficiencies in other areas. Yuen Cheung-Yan is the brother of Yuen Wo-Ping – perhaps the greatest exponent of HK action – and while not quite as innovative or super-smooth as his sibling, he’s clearly cut from the same cloth. At the risk of sounding sexist, don’t forget we’re talking a bunch of girlies here – Diaz, Barrymore and Liu all came in without significant martial arts experience, and making them look as good as they do is a great feat. Kudos, too, for the actresses in question, who clearly put in no little effort themselves. [Thank heavens Thandie Newton, who single-handedly destroyed the first half of Mission Impossible 2, was unable to take part, and Lucy Liu stepped in.]

The pacing is a little weird though; apart from one impressive battle between the trio and Crispin Glover in a back-alley (to the tune of the Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up), all the martial arts is concentrated in one 20-minute span near the end. At one point we have Cameron Diaz taking on Kelly Lynch, Lucy Liu going toe-to-toe with Glover and Drew Barrymore taking on a whole roomful at virtually the same time, and the cross-cutting does get a little aggravating. Barrymore’s battle is very show-offish: she tells her opponents what she’s going to do, pauses in mid-stream to name the fighting techniques, and moonwalks out of there when she’s done. A tap on the wrist and a warning not to do it again, Drew.

Indeed, much the same could probably be said of the entire movie. It works beautifully, despite its flaws, but it wouldn’t bear frequent repetition. It’s no bad thing that, because of scheduling conflicts, the sequel isn’t due out until three years after the original. Candy is indeed dandy, but it’s not the sort of thing from which you can form your staple diet.

Dir: McG
Stars: Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Sam Rockwell