In its attitudes, if nothing else, McG's Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle calls to mind a Hawksian universe of group loyalty, feminine dominance, an apparent behind-the-scenes spirit of carousing fun, and even cheerfully naive double entendres, all within the context of a major Hollywood film. Because McG never does anything stylistically--visually or sonically, that is--to suggest that he's paying homage to the cinema of Howard Hawks in any knowing way, I tend to think that these resonances are largely unintended and coincidental. But that only further endears me to this film's multitude of charms: the production circumstances of this movie have led, quite freely, to a film which arrives at the same conclusions as Hawks without ever necessarily being conscious of the commonalties they share with his worldview.

Group loyalty and feminine dominance stand high among Hawks' thematic concerns. Many of his films portray groups of individuals--often flawed or highly imperfect--who must address themselves to a pressing concern; loyalty to the group, and to the concern the group faces, are regarded as paramount virtues. Just about all of his films contain startlingly progressive views of women--not only women as equals to men (His Girl Friday, Hatari!, et al), but often the ones with the real power to evoke havoc (such as in the comedies Bringing Up Baby or Man's Favorite Sport?).

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle certainly shares many of these stances. It goes without saying, perhaps, that the Angels--Natalie (Cameron Diaz), Dylan (Drew Barrymore), and Alex (Lucy Liu)--are the dominant sex in the universe conjured by the filmmakers, able to take control of every situation, to emerge unscathed and victorious from every dangerous encounter, and, in at least one sequence, to literally dodge bullets. A large part of their success as crime fighters and secret agents is dependent on the cohesion of their group. The story is hinged on one of betrayal of that group--a former Angel (Demi Moore) who has turned to the dark side, power hungry and dissatisfied with merely being one of the gang. Additionally, the group is tested byways of the prospect of boyfriends and marriage, prospects largely rejected in favor of staying true to each other and "kicking butt seven days a week with my friends," as Natalie
puts it towards the end of the film. (That line alone had this avowed Hawksian--he is perhaps my favorite Hollywood director--laughing gleefully, as it could serve as the mission statement for so many Hawks heroes, or heroines.) The consistency with which the filmmakers present these themes (I won't say they explore them as much as lay them on the table) is exciting for a film which appears on the surface to be about nothing.

But the notion that this film is about nothing must have been crucial to its ultimate success in some respects. This isn't as perverse a claim as it sounds. I don't purport to possess extensive knowledge of how this film was produced, but on the surface of things it seems undeniably termite-like, to invoke Manny Farber's phrase for artists who "seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn't anywhere or for anything." When Natalie abruptly goes into an impromptu (though perfectly choreographed) dance routine while she's moving into a new house--and Dylan and Alex join in--the sensation one gets is that this whole film could be summed up as, in the words of critic Dave Cowen (writing in reference to the first film), "Drew Barrymore and her friends pretending to be Charlie's Angels because when they were girls they wanted to be Charlie's Angels." Cowen goes on, "It's the real-life juvenile fantasy of some grown women and me) brought to life with full production value. And, in that sense, it's fascinating." This is all to say that the film's raison d'etre has more to do with the whims of its game cast than alculated considerations of box office success or even any fidelity to its model, the popular '70s television show.

This too aligns the film with the Hawks tradition; Hawks, who assembled the brightest stars and worked for the biggest studios, to make essentially "home movies" (David Thomson's description of The Big Sleep) encouraged a profound sense of fun on his sets, improvising heavily and taking delight in abandoning the more schematic aspects of the genre films he worked in. There's a sense of conniving play behind nearly every Hawks film I can think of; it's the reason why many of the greatest stars of the period--Cary Grant, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn--did their very best, least encumbered, most free work with Hawks.

McG's mise en scene caters to the Angels entirely: they can't look too good or dominate the frame too much. He conforms cinematic space to the Angels, allowing improbable--even ridiculous--feats of physical dexterity (shoot-outs on motorbikes, Dylan clinging to the wing of a diving plane, etc.) to occur simply because it's the Angels performing these acts. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is the greatest goddess film since Jonathan Demme's The Truth About Charlie, which was less a remake of Stanley Donen's vaunted Charade than, as Bill Krohn put it in his review of the film for The Economist, "an unabashed attempt to convert the spectator to a new religion devoted to the worship of each delicate shade of tenderness, irony, ire, hurt and perplexity that flits across the face of Thandie Newton." The only difference in Full Throttle is that McG's camera is fixated, lovingly, on not one, but three goddesses, and considers their distinctive qualities independently: Diaz's boundless energy, ready to collapse into gawkishness and clumsiness at a moment's notice; Barrymore's compact, together confidence; Liu's poise and cool. Could Charlie and Full Throttle be indications that a new feminism is taking hold in Hollywood?

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is a triumph of unlikely sophistication and humor, evoking some of the best films ever made in its sensibilities, all the while merrily ignorant of the financial demands which plainly got it greenlit in the first place. But maybe "ignorant" is the wrong word. Drew Barrymore and her friends are something more: insiders using their power and leverage to winningly personal ends.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002