My mother has described the Charlie’s Angels TV series from the ‘70s as being campy entertainment that had its time, melting like the snowflake it was. Having seen a few episodes in full and others in part, I can only agree, though slightly less able to enjoy the camp following a couple intervening decades. Then came the dual McG flicks from around the turn of the millennium, keeping much of the camp-like aspect of the property and injecting some garbage wire work into the action sequences. Oh, and nigh on every fetish costume they could get away with and keep a PG-13 rating, ‘cause, y’know, empowerment and whatnot. (Now, I’m not gonna wade too deeply into the feminist angle of the franchise, but I will say I get some aspect of empowerment, what with a group of women kicking some ass and looking good doing so, but, especially with the McG films, it’s had to ignore the intense male gaze with which these empowering scenes are shot and dealt with. I don’t see how anyone could choose this particular hill to die on in the discourse is all.) Not satisfied with letting the franchise just, as my mother put it, melt away into the ether, Hollywood saw fit to once again resurrect the series, taking it ever-so-slightly more seriously, it would seem. Joy. Definitely necessary. Anyway.
The story ostensibly serves as a continuation of the franchise as a whole, the Townsend Agency expanding from its ‘70s TV roots to and beyond the McG films, and as something of an origin story for our new central trio. We’re introduced to the wild Sabina and former MI-6 agent Jane as they go about their business with the agency, their current Bosley (it’s a rank now, kids, not just the dude’s name) retiring and a new one being assigned. We’re then introduced to Elena, an engineer for a company designing some allegedly cool energy-channeling device that has some weaponizable aspects her superiors seem to be hand-waving away. She hires the Agency to make sure things don’t go completely sideways, only to find herself the target of a professional hit. From there on, she’s drawn into Agency as a partially unwilling sidekick, trying desperately to keep people from coming to harm from her creation and working to stay alive and take down some baddies in the process.
So, not gonna lie, there are some positive aspects to this highly unnecessary retread of a film. The cast is mostly pretty solid, with Kristen Stewart finally looking like she’s having some fun with a role that actually lets her do just that. There is something of an embrace of the mildly goofy camp seemingly inherent in the series, while also an attempt to somewhat ground things in reality, resulting in a decently entertaining action flick. I mostly like the way the plot is handled and how the characters gradually grow together.
Unfortunately, there are some massive faults that can’t go ignored here. Most glaring is the atrocious script that has no sense of how people speak to each other. Though I enjoyed the line decrying yellow as being anyone’s color (too true, glad someone finally said it), just about every other line of dialogue is ripped from the Complete and Utter Hack’s Guide to Screenwriting, with character motivations shifting as things go along, any hint of messaging served directly to the domepiece with a monkey wrench, and poor Elena coming across more idiotic than intelligent-yet-naïve. The effects work isn’t up to par, with some horrific compositing work on display alongside some garbage color-grading. (I reached a minor inflection point during the opening action scene, when Stewart is leaving the scene on a helicopter. Said chopper starts off with its flank parallel with the plane of the camera, shifts to a three-quarter position away from the camera, and exits in that direction. I don’t know if Stewart was afraid of heights and unwilling to do the shot, or if they somehow couldn’t get a real helicopter, but the resulting shot gives us a poorly-composited Stewart awkwardly hanging off of what looks like a fake helicopter and the two jerkily flying off into the night, one of the worst shots I’ve seen in years. Hard to take things seriously after that.) Elizabeth Banks does her best in the director’s chair with what she’s given, but I’d hazard to say that most directors would find the obstacles at hand difficult to overcome.
At the end of the day, this was a bad idea in the first place that was given some strength but ultimately hindered by the usual Hollywood laziness and ineptitude. If given better writing and effects work, this could actually have been pretty solid. As it is, it’s yet another film with potential torpedoed by a lack of care. What sits most wrong with me is when this movie underperforms just like Terminator 6 did, the higher-ups are gonna think it’s because of the casts being centered around women, that the films could have done better if they didn’t push such a “hard feminist” message. No, guys, no one would have been able to make these scripts work. No one. Quit giving work to pathetic hacks and pinching every available penny and make a good film, dammit. We’ve seen it done, you just have to give a shit about the final product. As it is, it’s hard for anyone to care about the film too much, but I wouldn’t discard it out of hand. It has its moments, and there’s fun to have, but if they don’t feel like trying, I don’t see why we should. Let ‘em lose some money, it’s what they care about. Maybe catch this one when it hits cable or streaming or something.
Allusions of Grandeur 