So, was anyone clamouring for a reboot of Charlie’s angels?
Charlie’s Angels is a fascinating little franchise that
manages to be empowering to women with having them as heroes in an action film,
kicking ass and taking names but also occasionally quite sexist with them being
objectified and talking constantly in innuendos. There’s an episode of the
classic show that has them infiltrate the club by going undercover as
strippers.
The McG Charlie’s Angels films are both incredibly dumb, and
suffer from many of the same problems as the original show, possibly
intentionally. But translating this idea into the more modern, *sigh* “woke”
setting has its own problems.
And nothing quite exemplifies this problem than the choice
of song to go along with the Marketing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a
marketing team be so tone-deaf as to allow a song called “Don’t call me Angel”
to be used to advertise Charlie’s Angels. I honestly feel that choice may have
doomed this film before it even came out.
Still, I want to give the film a shot based on its own
merits, so let’s take a look and see what they came up with.
A team of angels including Sabina Wilson (Kristen Stewart)
and Jane Kano (Ella Ballinska) manage to shut down the operations of an
embezzler named Johnny Smith, lead by the original John Bosley (Patrick
Stewart) it seems the Townsend agency has significantly expanded with
international branches and I think you can already draw comparisons to MIB
International. John is set to retire and is given a sweet send-off by the other
Bosleys
We have a mcguffin that can be reprogrammed to kill people.
One of the developers, Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott) has tried to bring this up
only to be shot down. It’s up to a recently brought together team of angels to
stop that the mcguffin from falling into the wrong hands.
Standing in their way is generic powerful assassin, a boring
business tycoon and wait, Bosley? OK, straight to spoilers but I understand
that Bosley is resentful about being forced into retirement, but why this
scheme, not only does it rely on a lot of things happening beyond his control, even
if this is a plan he’s worked on for years, but I’m not sure what the end goal
with it is. If it’s making money, I can think of a lot of simpler schemes. If
it’s revenge on the Townsend agency, same thing. The other thing is, if this is
supposed to be the Bill Murray Bosley, he was never a fighter, he was always
the go-between between Charlie and the angels.
The globetrotting in this one makes it feel it feel very
similar to MIB International, but the action in this is a lot more limited and
choreographed. In their defence though, the actual martial arts fights look
pretty good, the heavy CGI car chases on the other hand look less good, like a
bi-product of a restrictive budget.
The big seller of Charlie’s Angels is the dynamic between
the angels and to their credit this has an entirely new and interesting
dynamic. Jane is the best fighter of the group, and is the most aggressive but
sticks her core beliefs, quitting MI6 when someone she worked with ended up
screwed over by them. Sabina is more rebellious, but has some rich experience
like horse-riding up her sleeve. Elena is pretty new to any of it, but doesn’t
entirely lack skills thanks to her background with computers she’s an expert
hacker (yes, I know but it’s used sparingly enough) the 3 actors do decent jobs
in their roles and they play off each other quite well for the comedy
So we get not 1 but 2 new Bosleys in this film. Bosley
(Djimon Hounsou) dies pretty early on but is a good driver and compassionate.
Bosley (Elizabeth Banks) is a far more active player but does quite a bit
off-screen because Banks is also directing. One thing I like is how they make
use of the idea that the core 3 are not the only angels, something I feel MIB:
International failed to capitalise on.
But I suppose I should get to the elephant in the room. The
feminist angle. As a white male I don’t know how qualified I am to talk in
detail about this but… The point of the Angels is that women are often
overlooked or judged only by their looks, which in turn makes them useful
assets. The extent to which that’s true in 2019 is… less so. Yes, I know
mansplaining is still a thing [mansplaining is not in itself a sexist term, in
fact it’s a branch of sexism you morons] which in turns makes modernising the
concept for the modern era difficult.
The McG films always were tongue-in-cheek, they knew they
were trash so they had fun with it, this film has a more serious story and
relies on the character dynamics to fill the comedy. There are some good jokes
but I don’t feel the more serious story suits this franchise well at all. Now
the characters feel at odds with their own story. I can understand both men and
women liking the more high Octane and funny McG films.
Still, they are missing out on a decent film, the story
which is relatively generic and overcomplicated is risen by great acting and
chemistry from our leads, in particular Kristin Stewart.
R E B 5 5 T
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