TMC-4

Charlie's Angels essentially comes across as one of those so called "Event Movies" that gets hyped up by the press for months on end yet wallows in its own silliness and/or stupidity (and regardless, the movie will make a ton of money off of the almost brainwashed audiences). The movie itself more than likely knows that it's playing down to the audiences' intelligence for the sake of trying to make high entertainment yet it's ultimately all over the map in terms of nailing down a particular tone (it really comes off as a major loose cannon of a movie in other words). What exactly is this movie trying to prove and be, is it a comedy, a satire/parody, or an action film. This question can perhaps be even more justified for a movie that allegedly used over 10 writers over the course of the production.

In return, Charlie's Angels essentially proves to fall flat with some pretty embarrassing results. Virtually everybody who's involved here are stuck practically making absolute fools of themselves right in front of the camera. Yet they seem to firmly believe that they're already in on the joke and are so clever. In the process, the cardboard and almost stereotypical (primarily based upon the opening scenes) characters are reduced to playing dress-up and spouting corny dialog (usually made up of awkward one-liners and innuendos) without much of a payoff or anything to really push it forward from a storytelling point of view. Speaking of the story itself, it's basically something that doesn't have a good sense about actual reasoning for why certain things are happening on screen.

Certain things occur ultimately without much of a point behind them for motivation in the first place like a scene involving a car chase (which was likely thrown in simply for the sake of presenting a car chase in an action film). Most of the time, the movie is seemingly made up of a string of vignettes and some borrowed ideas from a string of popular action films (e.g. the Lethal Weapon movies, Mission: Impossible 1 & 2, The Matrix, the Indiana Jones movies, The Rock, Rush Hour, the Die Hard movies, Batman, etc.) from over the past decade (it even throws in the old "Which wire do I cut?" cliche for good measure). Along the way, we get some lame and unresolved sub-plots (some of which seemingly takes a page from the Batman and Superman movies concerning being caught in a dilemma when it comes to talking about your true identity) that comes off more like padding than something that in some form or another fit into the story.

The "Wire Fu" style of action sequences (which is often made up of the defining of gravity and some pretty gratuitous usage of slow-motion here and there) really lacks a genuine sense of danger and tension. This is needed for an action sequence to make an effective payoff yet the script is totally clumsy on where to lead this. Charlie's Angels is just relentless with is camp factor but it's also so full of itself that it just about sucks most of the excitement and credibility out of it. We already know going in that we have to suspend are belief towards what's going on. While the problem isn't the action on screen, it's really the dialog that seriously ruins the atmosphere due to its absolute cheesiness as you really want to seriously cringe rather than feel amused.

The movie makes the mistake of trying to incorporate comedy to a really high degree on a frequent basis. The problem that can occur when it comes to comedy mixing in with action at the exact same time is that there's all of a sudden too much to think about all at once. This is what helped seal the fate of Batman & Robin (another over-hyped so-called "Event Movie) as being an absolutely obnoxious movie that was insulting to the intelligence. Charlie's Angels likely believes that deep down inside it's providing some sort of positive message for young females. But it ultimately (like described before) is left making absolute fools out of just about everybody (especially those characters are left with cheating and lying to certain people who are really close to them) who's involved and carries a major tendency of simply toying around with its own subject matter.

The action in Charlie's Angels occasionally makes some sort of impact as it puts the "MTV Film-making Style" to some effective usage here and there along with the hard hitting fighting. But the whole thing in a way, ultimately just comes off as simply a major stunt show. What point does it exactly serve to provide a run down of the various out-takes and goofs in the closing credits other than to raise the level of questions towards what to make out of this movie? To go along with the questions (as previously mentioned) towards whether the movie is meant to be some sort of parody (e.g. a parody of the Charlie's Angels TV series itself along with the prologue sequences, the various usage of music, and the usage of the TV show Soul Train which is only mildly amusing), a comedy that's trying to be pretty over-the-top as we see countless costume changes and disguises as well as the humor in-between the action sequences, or a martial arts film that you can argue is trying its hardest to be hip?

It's very obvious that Die Hard With a Vengeance is trying to move away from the type of formula that was found in the first two films. It doesn't set around Christmas and the action moves around a city rather than setting itself around one particular building. But there are still several aspects that are considerably similar to the original. There's German terrorist, a plot about an estranged marriage, and a situation that involves being down to only two bullets. There are some involving elements towards the way the action is structured at first. The action and/or tension seems to be based on puzzles and riddles. There are numerous large-scale, well-crafted action sequences that can stand-out but at the same time, the story seems to lose some steam towards the middle (not to mention that the pacing on certain occasions, really bogs down) to the point were a gets to a climax that's not really stimulating. Certain aspects in Die Hard With a Vengeance grows a bit tiresome after a while. First and foremost, the profanity throughout ultimately feels like a really worn-out conversational piece rather than being the exclamation point of a line. Even the "Yippie Ki Yay..." line isn't very effective because the way it's presented simply feels too obligatory and seemingly thrown in at the very last minute. Secondly, while Die Hard With a Vengeance also tries to move away from the formula of having one person taking on the terrorist to having two, the movie obviously allows itself to seriously fall into typical cliches of cop/buddy type of movies in which the cops reluctantly work with each other but slowly begin to accept one other as the movie progress.