GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (Posted 6/30/03)

Only three people involved in this production should not be hanging their heads down in shame. Matt LeBlanc and John Cleese are genuinely funny in their quasi Abbot-and-Costello bantering as LeBlanc's character tries to explain to Cleese — playing the father of Lucy Liu's Angel — exactly what it is his daughter does. They're funny enough that they in fact seem to be in an entirely different movie. Actually, every scene in this picture seems to be from a different movie — the Cleese/LeBlanc bits look as if they came from a movie that might have stood a chance of being good. The third person who can walk this land with his head held high is Crispin Glover, who's such a Dadaist variant on the Nietzschean ubermensch that such bourgeois concepts as shame are completely alien to him.

But really — if you want to see what $125 million worth of nothing looks like, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is the picture for you. It's a picture with nothing on its mind, one in which literally nothing is at stake. It's true that some find its numbing sensationalism exhilarating — Harry Knowles clearly does, although his argument in favor of this film on Ain't It Cool news may strike you as a bit, well, overstimulated — but I'm in the camp that says it's trite and insulting. It's even more insulting when it's being peppered with all this knee-jerk "girls-kick-ass" quasi-piety. If this is the kind of empowerment women in Hollywood have been fighting for over the last century or so, well then it's no wonder Katharine Hepburn died this weekend.

One of the new songs on the picture's soundtrack (which for the most part is rather surprisingly dated — "Firestarter?" Really?) is "Feel Good Time," sung by Pink, in which she chants "real good, real good, ain't got no more brain." The song was co-written by Beck, so that line could have been intended ironically, but in the context of this film it's completely apposite. The only thing I'd lose is the "more." As for me, watching this overripe, ignorant parading of Hollywood privilege and hubris put me in mind of a different song — Neil Young's "Revolution Blues." Specifically the bit about Laurel Canyon being filled with famous stars . . .

— Glenn Kenny