Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (Unrated Widescreen Edition)
by McG

List Price: $9.99
Our Price: $1.95
You Save: $8.04 (80%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details

DVD details

DVD Reviews of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

DVD Review: Full throttle, yes! But...
Summary: 4 Stars

Anyway, the first film gelled and is one I can watch over and over for fun and simple pleasure. For many reasons, the sequal is not a movie I expect to own once it comes out on DVD.

The Angels are as great as ever, the action sequences, as promised, are overblown, intense, and highly implausible. The girls prove once again that nothing is beyond their power. They can hop on any machine and excel in any extreme sport. They look like an ad for Sobe drinks.

Unfortunately, the action scenes are too implausible to be believed and the wire work is much more obvious this time around. People defy gravity, walk through towering flames shirtless without getting burned, many times I found myself thinking "Oh yeah right!" instead of "Yeah, right on!"

Bruce Willis makes a cameo and gets to die on screen for perhaps the first time. Bernie Mac is a wonderful comic but he doesn't seem at ease in this film. He just seems out of place. He doesn't know what function he's supposed to perform for the agency! And when he's called into action he's a nervous wreck. Some people found it funny but I thought it was mean.

As befits a sequel we get to see more of how the Angels are faring in their personal lives. Are their romances progressing?
John Cleese makes an appearance as Lucy Liu's father (they show a family picture, only her mother is Asian). It's an obvious attempt to get some humor in the movie but is so tacked-on and unnecessary that it seems more an attempt to get in some cheaper screen filler. Matt Le Blanc reappears as the boyfriend, but isn't given much to do, and their relationship doesn't progress at all.

Cameron and her beau move in together, making Dylan feel insecure about the Angels breaking up sooner than expected. To reassure her, Jaclyn Smith makes a nice cameo appearence, looking great with her special brand of soft beauty and poise.

Where they really went wrong was with the casting of the bad guys. The Irish mob guy wanting to exact revenge on Dylan (who we find out, has a past that includes the Witness Protection Program) is just plain silly. He's trying to be Colin Farrel but he doesn't have the looks or charisma. When he struts around like a bad [...] you just want to roll your eyes. The actor who played T2000 in T2 is also on board, another rather unexpressionless automaton. The first rule of any thriller is we have to be afraid of the bad guys, we have to respect them as threats to our heroines. The creepy thin guy (professional weirdo Crispin Glover, always a pleasure) also returns but this time as a rather good guy. This is a fun choice but how it all turns out is extremely disappointing, another big mark dragging down the likeability scale.

Demi Moore looked way too thin, both physically and emotionally. Her eyes were dead empty (which made sense for the character I guess), it almost seemed like she was characteurizing her ex-hubby's acting style of complete non-reaction as the best response for everything. The only reason she's a threat to the Angels is because she's packing guns, something the first movie did without, a choice I much applauded it for. This movie goes back to using guns and it's just too bad that they did.

The opening sequence is so totally perfect, the best representation of why we love the Angels so much because it has the right blend of sillyness with Cameron Diaz playing a Swedish blond bimbo distracting a bunch of hardened soldiers by riding a mechanical bull. Her infectious grin and unique cackle makes this totally plausible. They escape by piloting a falling plane in mid-air, very much like the opening scene from the 007 film, "Goldeneye." Unfortunately, after that the movie's tone becomes either all action or all bad comedy (McG really has to learn how to use different lenses, he tends to only use extreme close-ups as if to say "you should be laughing at Cleese now.").

If nothing else, this movie could be a documentary for fads of the new milleneum.

In short, while there's great action, a wonderful attitude about girl power, the three stars don't seem as great somehow because the bad guys don't force them to be interesting, they've already been introduced and their personal lives aren't engaging or surprising, the dialogue attempts to be witty through the use of excessive puns, and there's too much angst on the part of Dylan for the girls to keep that happy-go-lucky attitude they had in the first film. You may enjoy it somewhat while you're watching it, but soon you'll be wondering why the use of wires is so obvious, and why the laughs they strive too hard for just don't come. Something's not quite right...

So I recommend you only pay matinee prices if you want to see the special effects and great pyrotechnics on the big screen, otherwise wait for it to appear on cable. I'm giving this 4 stars because the Angels are awesome but I really expected better.

Description of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (Unrated Widescreen Edition)