Charlie's Angels Review

Did anyone know that a new "Charlie's Angels" movie came out last weekend? Based off of box office receipts, I would be willing to bet the answer to that is no. And for those who were aware of its existence, most of them simply did not care. That general sentiment is kinda what I was expecting long before this began its advertising campaign. Does anyone care about a new "Charlie's Angels" movie? When the advertising did start, those feelings were confirmed as it didn't seem to elicit any excitement. But even then, I wasn't expecting this movie to open in single digits with $8.4 million. For context, "Terminator: Dark Fate" and "Men in Black: International," two other films that failed to restart a previously popular franchise, opened to $29 and $30 million respectively. For more context, the 2000 version of "Charlie's Angels" opened to $40.1 million and its 2003 sequel, "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" opened to $37.6 million. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, those two numbers adjust to $67.8 million and $56.9 million respectively. So this new movie opening to just $8.4 million really hurts. Granted, it only had a production budget of $48 million as compared to something like "Terminator: Dark Fate," which had a massive $185 million budget, but still. That hurts.

All of that means I didn't really need to see this movie. Just like no one cares about this new version of "Charlie's Angels," I doubt anyone was remotely curious about what my opinion of the movie is and I fully expect this review to get very few views because oftentimes box office numbers and view counts on my blog correlate quite well, especially when I get the review out a week late. But this was 100 percent a personal venture for me because I was curious about what the outcome of this movie would be. This curiosity stems back to nearly a year ago when I did my preview of the movies of 2019. After being perplexed about why we were getting this, a bit of an epiphany hit me. A modern version of "Charlie's Angels" has the potential to recreate the franchise into something significantly better than those older McG movies from the early 2000's. Those movies have zero substance. They only exist for teenage boys to salivate over the hot girls in skimpy outfits doing spy stuff. Believe me. I was a teenage boy when they were released and I know why all my friends loved them. And it wasn't due to the plot or action sequences. Have you ever tried to go back and re-watch them as an adult with a more critical mindset? They're terrible. That means there's something to be improved.

My vision for this new movie was that it would be one of these female empowerment movies. Rather than sexualizing the lead females in order to pander to a male audience, it could actually give them something to do. We need more movies with strong women leads in order to help propel forward a more progressive narrative. The history of Hollywood has been, general speaking, very male dominate, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the action genre. There's been so many iterations of James Bond over the years, in and out of that franchise, why not give women more of a chance? Actresses like Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron have proved to be very exciting and electric in action films. I want more of them. Specifically, I want more of them in roles where they're actually taken seriously, not sexualized in those roles like in the early "Charlie's Angels" movies or the Angelina Jolie "Tomb Raider." The more I thought about this, the more I felt that this is a great opportunity to make an entertaining female-led action movie that's empowering rather than degrading. And given that Elizabeth Banks was the director here, I had all the faith in the world that this is exactly what she was going for, especially since she herself played a supporting role in the movie to the angels.

I don't mean to toot my own horn here, but I came to those conclusions long before the trailers got released. When said trailers came out, I realized that I may have hit the nail on the head here, which is why I had to see this movie even though no one seemed excited. Elizabeth Banks even did an interview where she stated that men have no interest in seeing female-led action movies. While the validity of that statement could be debated, I will raise my hand excitedly to tell Elizabeth that there's at least one man in the country that went and saw this movie. And I walked out of the theater rather pleased that the trailers didn't lie to me and that my initial intuitions were right on. This is a movie with three female leads who are having an absolute blast and I found that rather infectious. I also liked how the three of them were different characters who mixed together to create a fun team of angels. Kristen Stewart played the carefree individual who was very wild and rebellious. She didn't care what anyone thought and just did her thing. Ella Balinska, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. She was very structured and serious in the way she went about her job. And then topping it off, Naomi Scott was the adorably naive newcomer trying to prove her worth.

All three of these girls did a great job at what they were asked to do. For Kristen Stewart, I feel this was a rather easy role for her as she has a naturally carefree personality, so it felt like she was being herself. This past decade she's spent a lot of time in the more serious, independent dramas where she totally shines. But those types of films I imagine require a lot of energy to engross yourself into these characters that she's so good at portraying. So this movie felt like a breath of fresh air for her where she could just relax and be herself. In doing so, she is absolutely the star of this movie. Which for me is no surprise. She's one of the more talented actresses working today and thus someone who I look forward to seeing all of her new work. For those of you still stuck on the "Twilight" thing, wake up and enter 2019. Stop judging someone by their appearance in one horrible franchise that's now around a decade old. Both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have had excellent careers in the decade since "Twilight" and have continually proved all the haters wrong. Yet the haters still keep hating. They very bragadociously speak about how awful those two are, yet when I challenge them, they've not seen a single film of theirs outside "Twilight." They're just hating in blind ignorance.

As far as the other two girls go, Naomi Scott is the other big name in this. She's having herself a great year as she gets to have fun in this movie after stealing the show in "Aladdin" earlier this year. But I was really impressed at how different she is in this movie. If I hadn't known going in that this was the girl who played Jasmine, I may not even picked up on that. I really liked her in this as the innocent newcomer who is very bright and optimistic, but isn't always given the chance to shine until she forces her way into it. This is a much different role than Jasmine. And also a much different role than one of the rangers in "Power Rangers." I think the three movies shows a good level of versatility that proves that she has a lot of potential moving forward in her career. Speaking of potential, Ella Balinska is a huge surprise here, but mainly because I had no idea who she was. She gave one of those performances that convinced me that I've seen her somewhere else, but I couldn't pinpoint it. I assumed she was a veteran actress with a lot of work under her belt, so I looked her up and this is her first big role. She's had a lot of small roles, mainly in various TV episodes, but that's it. This is the first time she's had center stage and she owned the spotlight. I hope she gets recognition for it.

Unfortunately, even though these three ladies genuinely did a great job and made for a fun team of angels, there's a movie around them that has to be analyzed. And as I've tried to pinpoint exactly what it is that didn't fully connect with me, it has to come down to the lady that has her name on the movie four times. Elizabeth Banks. She's the writer, director, producer, and co-star. And while she does a good job at the latter, this is about as basic as it gets when it comes to an action/spy thriller. The girls do an excellent job of elevating the movie and making it entertaining enough, but there's only so much they can do when the actual plot is as thin and predictable as they come. I'm trying to describe some specifics here as to not give you vague statements, but I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what happened because it's too disposable. And the action sequences in the movie are directed in a way that you can tell the director is inexperienced with action films. Thus I don't think Elizabeth Banks was the perfect choice to write and direct this film. This is only her second directorial effort after "Pitch Perfect 2," so not only does this not feel like the right genre for her, but the lack of experience as a director holds this movie back a bit.

I do think the feminist angle in the movie was rather amusing. I'm not talking about the strong female leads specifically, but rather the angle that all of the men in the film were the villains while all the girls were the heroes. They tried so hard to be progressive that they overcompensating to the extreme as girl power was oozing from start to finish. I honestly felt like I has crashed a Bachelorette Party. This didn't anger me. It just amused me. It did anger all the butthurt internet trolls, though. All the nerdy men living in their parent's basement playing video games all day absolutely swarmed this movie in anger and hatred ever since Elizabeth Banks said men don't watch female-led action films. It's the same group of internet trolls who got super offended when Brie Larson said she didn't need men to see "Captain Marvel," even though most of Brie's comments were taken out of context. Are we really going to lose our minds because the movie is "sexist towards men" as if men have been the oppressed gender for ages. If you want to know where all of these trolls congregated, go check out IMDb. The movie has a 3.9 score with hundreds, if not thousands of one-star reviews, which I'm guessing 95 percent of never even saw the movie. All of them kinda make me laugh.

Generally speaking, many of the critics that I have heard from seemed to be surprised that the movie is better than it has any right to be. The movie has a 54 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn't great by any means, but does constitute a slight majority saying that the movie is good. Many of the reviews said it is better than expected. And to that I say I told you so. No, this is no masterpiece. Again, I think the inexperience from Elizabeth Banks in terms of writing and directing action films, of which this was her very first attempt at, is what holds the movie back a bit. But it's still a whole lot better than all the internet trolls whose masculinity was threatened when Elizabeth Banks called them out after a making a movie that makes them look like the inferior gender. And it's really the performances of the three leads that elevate this into being a movie that's much better than it has any right to be considering the inferior writing and directing. I think this failed financially because this is a franchise as a whole that people weren't interested in revisiting. Sometimes shoving franchises down people's throats is not always the best game plan. But still, if you ever decide to objectively give this a shot, I think you might find yourself decently entertained. My grade for it is a 7/10.