Considering that I hate the Charlie’s Angels movies from the early 2000s, I had a pretty low bar for this new version. The makers of the latest Charlie’s Angels not only lowered that bar, they then took the bar, wrapped it in the most trite of feminist clichés and beat me over the fucking head with it until the very last ounce of joy escaped from my soul. You remember the part of How the Grinch Stole Christmas when the Grinch’s heart grows ten sizes? The exact opposite happened to me while watching this movie. This is a cynical, boring, uninspired corporate product that exists purely to squeeze another dollar out of an existing intellectual property with so little effort or thought that the film exists purely in a nightmarish creative void run by lawyers and accountants. It isn’t so much a film as it is an anti-film, a product so cynical and calculated in its blandness that it would burn a creative spirit like holy water on a vampire.
This is basically a feminist Fast & Furious movie, so it somehow manages to be both childish and condescending at the same time. The plot is so derivative and by-the-numbers that it is almost baffling, like something that should be studied to determine the minimal number of fucks that can be given while writing a script. Naomi Scott (who was Princess Jasmine in the recent Aladdin remake) plays a scientist that has created some sort of electronic device that can power a building, but can also be weaponized. Don’t worry about the details of this thing (the filmmakers sure as fuck didn’t) because it only exists as a MacGuffin (definition: object that the plot revolves around). Of course, her bosses don’t listen to her because men are assholes and people are out to steal it and kill her because men are also evil. She goes to Charlie’s Angels for help, because you would always go to an underground agency that you have no reason to know exists rather than the cops, and then we meet our other two Angels played by Kristen Stewart and Ella Balinska. Together, they have the chemistry of an enraged badger and a sack of hammers.
The following two hours follows the angels trying to find the nondescript device before the nondescript bad guys get it and use it for nondescript evil plans. That’s the same plot as the last dozen or so Fast & Furious movies along with a million other paint-by-numbers action movies. I could deal with that if the movie made up for it with solid action and interesting characters, of which this movie has neither. The action is poorly edited to the point that it is difficult to know what the fuck is happening and features physics that often makes the Fast & Furious movies seem like documentaries. It’s fine if a bad guy is firing a fucking Gatling gun at an angel from five feet away, because bullets don’t fucking work in this movie. Characters? Humor? Fuck all that, because these people speak in nothing but awful meta-humor. It was about 45 minutes until it dawned on me that this was supposed to be a comedy; I just thought that everyone was so fucking cool that they only spoke in rejected Family Guy jokes. But if you like a good plot twist, then you should stay the hell away from this because it has a plot twist that is so obvious and broadcasted that I feel like the movie was personally calling me an idiot.
The movie does clearly consider me to be an idiot due to the fact that I have a dick. This is two hours of feminist preaching that is so hackneyed and over-the-top that the crowd at a Lilith Fair concert would tell it to calm the fuck down. Rosie the Riveter leading an army of pink beavers to chop down the Washington monument would be more subtle than this movie. From the opening, cringe-inducing montage of random women doing science-y things to the final moments showing every major female athlete in the world training the angels, this movie displays the nuance and refinement of a Cannibal Corpse song in putting forth its message. It’s a fucking Charlie’s Angels movie, you don’t need a speech about female empowerment every five fucking minutes. The point of the entire goddamn concept is female empowerment. I’m supposed to be rooting for the angels and I can’t when they constantly grind the movie to a halt with insipid, pompous bullshit that makes me wish the villains would just finally learn how to aim a goddamn gun. This is Charlie’s Angels as if it was written by a twelve-year-old girl that just got dumped for the first time and wrote the script while sobbing in a closet and listening to Beyonce on repeat.
Charlie’s Angels is the equivalent of being yelled at by an idiot for two hours. There is nothing here that hasn’t been done before by a million better movies, and yet the film still manages to be insufferably smug. I have seen worse movies, but it has been awhile since I have seen something this soulless and transparent in its bullshit. But then again, I am a man so maybe I’m just not smart enough to get it.
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*Please note that The Film Nurse disagrees with the Doctor. She thought the script was lacking, but the chemistry between the actors was entertaining and natural.
Also she loves Kristen Stewart. Deeply.
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