Eye Candy that will definitely rot your mind. But it sure taste sweet going down.

Helmed by music video director McG, "Charlie's Angel's" is indeed like 20 music videos played back to back. The plot here is threadbare worn, the acting is total ordinary (everyone plays exactly what we expect) and the action sequences are one ripped-off cinematic gimmick after another. And yet, somehow I still liked the damn thing. I imagine most people won't however.

For those of you fresh out of the womb and/or without cable TV, "Charlie's Angels" was a 70's show from Aaron Spelling that ushered in, along with "Three's Company," a genre of television known as "Jiggle TV." The Angels were three female private dicks (he he) who worked for an unseen millionaire (voiced by John Forsythe, as he is in this movie version). The Angels were helped by their goofy manservant Bosley who seemed to delight in ogling the three luscious babes and giggling through endless innuendos about "going undercover" and such.

Here, the show is updated for the moment with the Angels becoming three luscious babes who seem to know a lot of martial arts moves. Drew Barrymore is the California badass with a history that has been left on the cutting room floor rendering the "heart" of the movie on the critical list. Barrymore carries a Zippo lighter and one character makes mention of her not knowing her dad and we realize that a whole plot thread has been removed from the film, presumably to keep pacing taunt. Barrymore is a millennium babe, a real woman who knows her sexuality and her intelligence and how to use them effectively. Her character is a reflection of that. Cameron Diaz is the goofy, ditzy blonde who is really a idiot savant. She wear little boy's underwear (is this sexy to some sicko straight guys?) and giggles a lot. She's cute. Who could dislike her? It's the same character she played in "There's Something About Mary" only she's an Angel. Lucy Liu is the Asian babe who wears a lot of leather and seems a bit dominant. Men easily bow down to her superior masculinity and intellect and rightly so. All three of these women are modern archetypes for the "female empowerment" movement and work well using intelligence, wit, and most importantly, eroticism to render their foes powerless. I feel sorry for straight guys these days; I really do. These chicks could emasculate the most virile of leading men. And, of course, they do.

The men in the film are manyfold fools and idiots played out by Bill Murray (as a witty Bosley), Tom Green (Barrymore's real life honey doing his usual "look at me" schtick), Luke Wilson (typical new male - sensitive guy w/o balls), Crispin Glover (who looks cool doing action but utters not one word), Sam Rockwell (the best actor in the piece because he's the only actor with something to do), Matt LeBlanc (wow he plays an actor just like his character on "Friends!" Wait a minute... It is his character on "Friends"), and Tim Curry ("Hi, I'm the bad guy"). All of these males pale in the light radiating from the three leading ladies.

"Charlie's Angels" has some of that "Matrix"-y, music video edited, Industrial Light and Hoo-Ha action going on. Using wires and computer effects and martial arts action, the film looks cool even though we've seen all this stuff before. A bullet in slow-mo ala "The Matrix" appears and wire-fu ala the genre Yeun Woo-Ping has perfected for American audiences permeates every scene here. There's even a big bell falling from the rafters of an old mission while two characters fight underneath, echoing an incident that happened in "Shanghai Noon" earlier this year (starring Luke's brother Owen Wilson no less). All this stuff is becoming pretty typical pretty quickly. Yet, it's just new and novel enough to still be cool, cutting edge for the next 15 minutes.

With 6 of the perkiest tits in American movies right now, cool cars, cool explosions, wire work action, lotsa slo-mo, and numerous computer generated effects, "Charlie's Angels" is a momentary pleasure, as disposable as pop music or Bic pens, as easily forgotten as the sit-com on TV last night. I can't complain but I was really hoping for something with more legs, considering the six gorgeous and muscular gams that carry the film.

Notes:

Also with Kelly Lynch.

Executive Producers include Spelling, Leonard Goldberg (who produced the original series with Spelling), Betty Thomas and Barrymore.

The soundtrack mixes hits from the 70's with modern pop. A segment is supposedly set on the soundstage of TV's "Soul Train."

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