28 June 2003
Fresh Pond Cinemas

The question to ask about Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is this: Was Demi Moore in on the joke? When she was dating Aston Kusher and getting the exorbitant surgical procedures required for her to look "good" in this movie, what was she thinking? Was it, "Boy! I've really made it now!," or "I haven't been this popular since Patrick Swayze covered me with clay!"

Demi's acting was by no means the only extreme sport on display. No, we were blessed with a veritable X-Games fantasia, including motocross racing, street luge, jetskis, and rodeo. Indeed, this was a different kind of action movie. Let me explain. In the typical testosterone action flick, you have some convoluted plot involving either armageddon or time travel (and in some special cases, both at once). Throughout this diabolical scheme wades our hero (or heroes), who use their steadfastness and courage to avert the near-tragedy. And (this is the fun part), usually at the end of the movie, everyone walking out of the theater will try to locate the hole in the plot, saying something like, "if Arnold goes back in time to rescue the boy who grows up to stop the robots from taking control of the Earth, how can Arnold still exist?" Or, more simply, "how did he happen to have those four sticks of dynamite at the end of the movie if he had to dive underwater to rescue the submarine before it exploded?"

Well, friends, Charlie's Angels is not that kind of movie. In fact, it has no plot to speak of, and consists of a semi-connected montage of music video-esque scenes of models with guns shooting at each other. We're not even supposed to care why they're doing what they're doing, or how in less then four minutes they managed to get three color coordinated Kawasaki motocross bikes complete with uniforms, let alone a street luge. Instead, this movie was so abstract it was almost an art film. It reminded me of Matthew Barney, except that without the Vaseline it was much, much worse. The best thing you can say is that Drew Barrymoore was a former child star, whereas Demi Moore is the one that looks like she should have been.

Nutritional Equivalent: If you take every Pop Tart eaten in the US each year and lay them end to end, they'll reach over half way to the moon!