Charlies Angels (2000)

 

Angel Delight

Charlies Angels (2000)
USA 2000 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

I remember when I first saw the first Charlie’s Angels movie at the cinema back in 2000. I’d remembered I half liked the TV show as a kid back in the 1970s but nothing had prepared me for this particular experience, which is easily one of the greatest American action movies of the decade coupled with art design which elevated it far beyond the expectations of its target audience. I think I saw it about five times at the cinema and, I’m glad I did because, you can’t see that cut anymore, it turns out. I’ll get to that later.

Okay, so the film opens with an earlyish example of company logo vandalism where, after the Columbia torch lady comes up, the camera pans to the side and around her into the sky next to her, before transforming into the sky around a passenger aeroplane to establish the setting for the first scene. Now cinema adaptations of old TV shows were not always successful and hadn’t quite gotten into their stride in terms of the new ones around at this time. We’d had Mission Impossible at the cinemas (which I didn’t see for at least another fifteen years, you can read my review of it here) but director McG obviously knew there would be a certain amount of cynicism attached to a remake of Charlie’s Angels, loved by so many people back in the day.

So he deals with it all right out of the starting blocks, in one of the most riveting and silly opening sequences of the year, completely winning over this audience member and, judging by how successful this first movie was, quite a lot of people. He cleverly starts it off in a slow journey with the camera around the interior of an aircraft with not an Angel in sight. Then we follow a character played by L. L. Cool J, who makes contact with a minor villain for this segment. The rich colours of the aircraft include a lot of red and the look of the film is all important in terms of bombarding the audience with some eye popping designs. Then the script does a very clever thing, after the villain reveals he has a time bomb strapped to him which is counting down... he starts watching an inflight movie which is a fake remake of the old TV series T. J. Hooker and, the two chat briefly about how they hate stupid movie remakes of TV shows. So, yeah, McG already undermines any audience reaction that the film is not, at the very least, self aware and then, he suddenly speeds everything up and piles us into an action sequence... as L. L. Cool J opens the plane doors, throws out the villain and jumps out after him. He’s joined by Lucy Liu’s Angel character called Alex mid air and, the two of them manage to get the bomb off the bad guy and then drop him, with themselves, into Cameron Diaz’s waiting speedboat, Diaz playing Angel Natalie. 

It’s at this point that L. L. Cool J takes a voice changer out of his mouth and pulls his face off, to reveal it was a mask used for the third and, behind the scenes, most important of the Angels, Dylan, played by Drew Barrymore. It was Barrymore who had already bought the rights to the show before the film went into production and it was her who stood to make a fortune from the success of the movie (and its sequel, which she did to the tune of $40 million for the first one and, although not confirmed, $80 million for the less successful but, equally fun sequel).

Then, in a brilliant move to get fans on the side of the movie even more, we hear the voice of John Forsythe, the original voice of Charlie, who is reprising the role for this and the next one, as McG takes us on a parody remake of the original TV show title sequence, including some nods in scene reconstructions from the original show. It’s brilliant, uses a new version of the original theme music over some of it and, yeah, this is the way you overcome a reluctant audience... with sheer brilliance. 

And then the film somehow manages to keep going even stronger, as it reveals the new Bosley (played by Bill Murray), a red herring villain played by Tim Curry, a brilliant action henchman, The Thin Man, played by Crispin Glover (his real life dad tried to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, reviewed here), Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Tom Green, Kelly Lynch and the truly brilliant Sam Rockwell. 

And it’s a nice enough story of industrial espionage disguising the true intentions of the villanous antagonists of the film, who really were a fairly good twist reveal about two thirds of the way through the movie. It’s another old story but any weaknesses in the script (which went through at least thirty drafts by numerous writers because they wanted to get it right... there’s a reason why this film seems so polished at all levels), which are few and far between, are more than carried by the combinations of criminally good acting, imaginative fight choreography, some amazing dance sequences and some beautiful set designs with every different scene bringing in a strong, themed colour palette significantly different from each preceding scene. 

It’s also quite innovative in terms of what they do with the camera in this one... so, for instance, those amazing high speed push/pull Vertigo-like zooms during the off circuit racing car chase or, during that same sequence, the way lorries rushing in front of each car in a side view are used as very fast transitions to cut between the two cars. It’s amazing stuff and the film is full of little jolts of brilliance like this, giving the whole production a very highly stylised feel, almost like a comic book. The director himself, if I’m remembering correctly from the time, said the film takes place in ‘Angel time’, a kind of heightened, beautiful alternative to real life... which would explain, I guess, why opening the plane door to save all the passengers at the start didn’t result in all the passengers getting sucked out to their death.

I have one big criticism with the movie plus, a fair few criticisms of the home video releases of the film. Let me get started on the thing which totally popped me out of the film and my seat when I saw this the first time at the cinema. There’s a big, bold cue at one point in the film and it’s composer Akira Ifikube’s Godzilla leitmotif. As soon as I heard this my mind was like, “No way” and I was expecting a sophisticated joke based on one or more kaiju eiga. Instead, it becomes clear after about five seconds that it’s just been used as an opening and sample base for a piece of modern techno music, which the director was using from one of many (probably no comparison for an original score where this movie goes) needle drop musical selections. So yeah, that was disappointing.

Now, the 15 rated version of the movie as released in UK cinemas is longer than any other country’s versions and stuff like a full on sequence involving nunchucks never made it to home video, which is a damn shame and should not be censored, especially since the UK always had a ban on the weapons being included in films until around about this period (yeah, you can guess what looking at a UK home video version of Enter The Dragon was like before this point... this is why God invented mulitregion players). I also happen to remember.... although nobody else I know seems to (perhaps they didn’t do multiple cinema trips like I did) that the drive through hamburger scene near the start of the movie included an exchange of dialogue with a bit of a put down by the Angels directed at the burger seller... I remember it being the only false note/crack in the ‘nice gal’ facade of the Angels and felt it was just out of place. Well, if I didn’t imagine that scene (and I’m pretty damn certain I didn’t), then I guess somebody on the film also realised it didn’t promote empathy with the angels and, the scene is significantly shorter on the home video version, for sure. 

Those minor grumbles aside though... I’d have to say that Charlie’s Angels by McG is still a pretty great art/action spectacle with some beautiful, innovative sequences which I think a lot of today’s modern film students could learn a lot of lessons from. An absolute classic which is maybe a little dated already in some of the attitudes on display but, yeah, who cares about that kind of stuff when it’s put together so well. My one warning to viewers is... don’t waste your money on the cheapo, UK Blu Ray double pack edition as I did... as the version of the sequel, Charlie’s Angel’s Full Throttle, is not the proper, full on unrated US cut of the movie, but the standard theatrical, ‘sans blood spraying every time someone gets hit in the face’ version of the film. If you want the full, unrated version of the sequel on Blu Ray, you need to pay out the extra for the US edition of the film which clearly states it has both cuts on there (as I have just done, once I discovered which print of the film was on the second disc). This is disgraceful behaviour by the UK distributors based, I would suspect, on the fact that they don’t want to shell out the cash to resubmit the longer cut to the admittedly evil UK film censors at the BBFC.

Zombieland - Double Tap

The Tappening

Zombieland - Double Tap
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
2019 USA
UK cinema release print.

Wow. it’s been ten years already, to the month apparently, since the first Zombieland hit cinemas and received a warm welcome from audiences across the globe. It had a certain easy charm and a lot of gut wrenching humour in the movie but it’s taken a while to get to this sequel, which is also set quite a time after the first film, with the four main actors reprising their roles... Woody Harrelson as Talahasse, Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, Emma Stone as Wichita and Abigail Breslin as Little Rock. Normally when a sequel takes a long time in its gestation period, the cast and crew are always quick to say that they were waiting until the script was properly developed and right and, you know what? I wouldn’t have minded it a bit if they’d have claimed the same thing about this one because, if anything, Zombieland - Double Tap is even funnier and at least as smart and self aware as the first movie.

This film starts with our four friends making their way through the post apocalyptic Zombieland and using The White House as their home before things get messed up and the two girls take off again. Columbus re-finds love... okay, re-finds sex... when he discovers the hilariously airheaded Madison, played by Zoey Deutch and things get even sillier as the writers do not use her as a throwaway character and she has a role to play in this... including making Wichita jealous when she regroups with the other two.

Why does Wichita come back? Well, Little Rock has found love with a peaceful but impossibly naive pacifist who is taking her to the ‘safe haven’ of Babylon, populated by peace loving folk who burn all their weapons and turn them into jewellery. Trouble with that is... things are getting even more dangerous out there in Zombieland, with a new breed of hard-to-kill zombies beginning to appear. So the remaining four go on a road trip to catch up with her and, on the way...

... they meet a few new characters, in addition to Madison. There’s Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch, for example, playing bizarrely similar characters to Talahasse and Columbus, which may seem like a bit of an obvious ploy for comedy antics and, indeed, it is... but like the first film, the writers are well aware of what they are doing and make sure the audience know they are not trying to dumb it down for the viewing public. The scenes with these two are actually very funny and they don’t outstay their welcome. Also, one of my favourite actresses, Rosario Dawson, gets a pretty decent role here as another new character, Nevada... so I was happy.

There are quite a few shout backs to the original movie in this one... so if you haven’t seen it in a while, you might like to re-watch it quickly before going to see this... like a wonderful scene where our main protagonists find out that Columbus’ accidental killing of Bill Murray (playing himself) in the first movie has spawned a verb amongst the surviving human population in those areas. There’s also Columbus’ rules and various typographic shenanigans lit up on screen via the use of CGI which really move the film along and tug at the funny bone in some cases (try and read them all because there are some great throwaway lines hidden in the words here).

Now, it would be true there are no real surprises in the movie... a ploy where something happens to one of the characters halfway through the story to cause their hasty exit from the film for a while didn’t fool me one bit, for example, with exactly what I thought was actually going on (down to the specific manifestation of symptoms... trying not to spoil it here) actually turning out to be the case. However, because the script is so intelligent in terms of the dialogue and the way that dialogue functions, which seems to be a trait built into the cynicism of the characters, thus allowing the audience to know that they are ‘in on the joke’... means that even the ‘not so surprising surprises’ are not exactly disappointing and, honestly, just add to the fun here. In fact, I rarely laugh at comedies (even when I love them) but this one did get a good number of chuckles from me during the screening.

Also, like the first one, the film doesn’t skimp on the goriness normally associated with the zombie genre (even zombie comedies like this one) and, although it does kind of 'normalise' the violence somewhat... in a non-jaded manner... it does also get a few laughs on occasion, especially when Columbus is running us through the zombie-types which they have now become known to the group as.

And, this was a near perfect movie for me. If I had to say the one thing that disappointed me about this one, then I’d have to say it’s that there are no references to Twinkie Bars in the sequel, given that they played such an important role in the first film. Honestly though, it doesn’t really matter here because the quality of the script is such that I’m willing to forgive small character continuity traits like this and, as Columbus points out in his running voice-over narrative at the start of the film, the characters have moved on a little since the first one. There was even a true moment of suspense towards the end of the film when the fate of one of the main characters hangs in the balance... which was pretty good going from the director here, since it’s a comedy.

So there you go. That’s me more or less done on Zombieland - Double Tap other than to say, if you liked the first movie then you’ll probably really like this one and, a quick word to stay around past the credits... there are mid credits and post credits extra scenes, both a shout out to a specific, audience pleasing sequence in the first film so, you know, don’t run for the exits when the end credits start playing out. Also, if you do stay, know that it’s actually Woody Harrelson covering a song over the end credits too so... you know... stay in your seat for a bit.