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Charlie's Angels is the reincarnation of a popular seventies TV show. The premise was that three female ex-criminals join a private detective agency and drive around Florida solving mysteries and fighting crime. Reviewers generally regarded it as an unintelligent, insubstantial show which viewers only watched because the contrivances of the plot demanded that the women never wore any bras.
The programme starts with a frighteningly sexy voice-over from the mysterious mission control character Charlie (Victor Garber). Unfortunately both the script and music are instantly grating. The opening line speaks for itself: “Once upon a time there were three young women, who got into very big trouble.” This is incongruously juxtaposed against Rihanna's 'S&M'. Charlie then proceeds to introduce the Angels and their past misdemeanours. There's Abby (Rachael Taylor) – 'park avenue princess turned thief', Gloria (Nadine Velazquez) – 'marine decorated for valour, court-martialed for a deadly mistake' and Kate (Annie Ilonzeh) – 'dedicated police detective turned dirty cop'.
The angels' first mission is to rescue a sixteen year old girl from her malicious kidnappers. Abby begins by strolling through a trendy bar talking authoritatively through an earpiece. Kate, disguised as a maid, responds in kind as the screen swipes back and forth between them hyperactively. We are introduced to a man called Bosley (Ramon Rodriguez) who is apparently a player with language skills. There's a guy in a suit who Gloria throws about on a beach and shoots at because he's obviously evil. Suit man tells them where the girl is, Bosley hacks into, well, something, Abby and Kate beat up the bad guys in a surprisingly realistic and well-choreographed fight, and they save the girl. Standard fare, nothing unexpected (except perhaps that the camera didn't shake like a squirrel during fight scenes), mission accomplished. Or so it would seem.
After the Angels establish that all they want in a man is money, a car explodes, killing Gloria. Everything is exiting and unanticipated until Bosley turns up and tells everyone how sad he is that Gloria is dead in much the same way as your accountant uncle would tell you about a very interesting aspect of tax law. The angels finish each other's lines and then get debriefed by sexy-voice man. It turns out that all the nasty crimes in Florida are the machinations of a man called 'Paharo' who nobody has ever met. The angels find a young Latino woman called Eve (Minka Kelly) who has a shady criminal past and claims to have been friends with Gloria. After a brief stand-off, Eve is set up to become a replacement angel who, like all the others, has a heart of gold, gets into arguments about nothing at all, and is totally unaffected by her chequered history.
What follows is a typical 'find El Baddie' plot in which the characters go from place to place, each time finding one convenient clue, and there is only ever one convenient clue, until Eve gets kidnapped and leads them to El Baddie in the process. There are some PG fights, the bad guy goes to jail and everyone is happy. Apart from the bad guy of course. Boring Bosley gives Eve a very American speech about redemption and she joins the Angels.
Charlie's Angels is a time filler, a distraction, a displacement activity. It's not exactly boring, but it's not interesting either. I don't want to watch any more until I do important things like finish my essays, check Facebook, learn salsa, memorise the lyrics to fifteen Abba songs, get my novel published, find love, make the perfect brownie, and start a business based around hugs.
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