Action Movie Showdown - Charlie's Angels 2019 Edition
- Das Bob
- Apr 24, 2020
- 4 min read
For some reason, throughout my watching of this reboot of Charlie's Angels, I kept thinking of the Mighty Boosh episode where Charlie the giant wad of gum comes to town and scares everyone. Charlie coming, Charlie coming, it's a Hubba-Bubba nightmare!
Anyways, I hear this movie had some sort of big controversy when it came out, so I will file it away in my group of films that tell me I am a bad person for not supporting it more than I did and saying thank you for the opportunity. Me being the jerk I am, knows that it's no fun to review a movie based on a boring social controversy these days because every movie has one now. I am going to review in the most unbiased way that I know how too. With disregard for all the time and effort put into it.
Charlie's Angels 2019 edition is actually not that bad of a film. There, I said it. I mean, it's far from anything good, but from the review bombs, I figured it was probably poor at best. I would describe it as adequate, it felt like watching any overdone middle-end action film. You know, where the parts of the film that are good are being weighed down by the parts that don't work. Letting the quality settle somewhere right in the middle. It seems like for every point I liked about the film, something else exists that's dragging it down to base mediocrity. For example, I think the cast was really good and didn't mind Kristen Stewart at all in her portrayal of her annoying character, who was meant to be some kind of a socially awkward weirdo on speed...right? On the same front, this cast had no chemistry at all. Their good individual performances did not equal a nice fun mesh of characters. At times it felt like they filmed everyone's scenes individually in different rooms. The Angels themselves didn't click at all as a group, which was fine for the beginning, but part of this movie's plot was them learning to work as a team, and become a family, and that just didn't happen.
Speaking of the plot, it worked as a run of the mill action intrigue movie. I don't ever expect a crazy plot from this type of film, and I honestly think Charlie's Angels as a franchise kind of lives and dies on the interaction of the Angels themselves. We have already covered that the chemistry is bad, so the blandness of the action scenes doesn't help that any.
Saying that though, I am going to contradict myself and say that the action scenes were still probably the best parts of the film. The chase scenes, fight scenes and feminine wiles beating men scenes were all mostly fun if not a bit by the numbers. It does fall into the tropes that most action films do, but there is nothing wrong with that. Other than the new tech girl, the other two angels had their moments to perform, and since that pair did most of the fighting, it worked out solidly. Then there was the comedy. I am sure someone will eventually tell me that those jokes were not for me, and I will agree as they all pretty much all fall flat. None of the jokes, quips or clever lines feel genuine, they all feel like dialogue. I find it hard to get into the fun of a joke when you can picture a team of writers struggling to find something funny for an Angel to say. I would have been happy with no quips during the fight scenes just to keep the heart pumping.
In the end, I actually think this movie gets a bit of a bad rap. I understand why it does, but the truth of the matter is that it works on a base-level and is quite watchable as an average action movie. It doesn't really do anything to stand out from the crowd, and I would think that some of the heavy-handed panderings do not work for most people, but it is at least watchable if you're hurting for an action movie.
Alright, enough review words. Time for the Action Movie Showdown breakdown!
1 - Nostalgibility - 7/10 - Charlie's Angel's actually has a lot of nods to past films and the TV series without going overboard. So a notch in the cap for you.
2 - Action-osity - 5/10 - The action scenes feel bare bones and a bit bland. Although performed well, they hit a middle line and stay there.
3 - Team Spirit - 1/10 - Take Patrick Stewart of the screen and this cast struggled to find an identity as a group.
4 - The Jokes - 3/10 - Although not a full-blown action-comedy, the Angels fail at making anything seem fun or at least interesting for the most part.
5 - Kristen Stewart's Lower Half - 2/10 - For a movie that is supposed to stray from the norm of the action film, seeing Miss Stewarts' back end in short skirts, short shorts and close-ups make it feel a bit disingenuine.
Bonus Round!!!!!! +1 for Patrick Stewards Villainy
Final Score - 18 + 1 bonus point for a total of 19 out of 50, which makes it better than Bloodshot. Not that that's a hard thing to be.
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