The difference between pulp and junk: Phone Booth and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle By Justin Remer Justin Remer is an Ohio-born writer and filmmaker, currently living and studying in New York City.

"...no book worth its salt is meant to put you sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out..." --Bohumil Hrabal

As an admitted film addict, I sometimes do things that would lose me credibility as a film connoisseur. This would include enjoying movies like Josie and the Pussycats and Dead Man on Campus enough to own them on DVD. (Fortunately, someone broke into my house and stole these movies, along with a few others, freeing me from the shameful evidence.)

However, I do consider myself to be someone with taste, but with a wide palate encompassing the marginal and the most pop. And I feel that even in the junk, one can find some pearls -- or at least some divertingly shiny objects. This is why I must make the following statement:

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is not nearly as good as its predecessor.A lot of moviegoers would disagree. They would ask: What’s the difference? Why is the first one so great? Who even cares?

Well, while the first Charlie’s Angels movie was not some sort of heartfelt indie movie, it was not nearly as bloated or insulting to its audience as Full Throttle. The first movie was fast, fun junk food, with a load of idiotic pseudo-spy adventures, revealing outfits, and Matrix-and-music-video-influenced fight scenes full of computer trickery.

In Full Throttle, there is much of the same, except... it feels much shallower and less fun. First off, the story is so mindnumbingly simple that its function as padding between the setpieces is glaringly obvious. At least the first movie had the decency to make no sense, so that the audience at least paid attention, hoping that it would become clear at some point. The slow-it-down, speed-it-up, zoom-it-in-and-out computer effects have consumed the action scenes so much, the scenes play like the creations of a computer program, designed to incorporate as much technology into as little time as possible with no thought given to creating a sensation of joy. Instead, there’s the sensation of sensation.

Upon hearing my thoughts on Full Throttle, I have been presented with the argument, "Well, it’s a Hollywood movie, so it’s going to be big, dumb, flashy entertainment."

As evidence to the contrary, I would like to present Phone Booth, which I saw shortly after Full Throttle at the second-run theater, and which is now on video and DVD.

Phone Booth is a Hollywood movie. It is flashy entertainment. But fortunately, it is not too big, and even more thankfully, it is not dumb.Scripted by exploitation film veteran Larry Cohen, Phone Booth has a high-concept come-on suitable for William Castle (The Tingler) or Alfred Hitchcock (The Birds): a man is held hostage in a phone booth by a caller who claims he will kill him if he hangs up and leaves. The majority of the film takes place in the phone booth.

Handled wrong, this could be really dopey; but there are a few key things the movie does right. First off, it only lasts for eighty minutes. This is enough to get the premise really rocking, throw in some keen plot twists, and then get off the stage without wasting the audience’s time. Secondly, the movie is about that ultra-Hollywood theme of redemption in a corrupt world --the hero is a shitbag PR man, played by Colin Farrell, who is taken hostage by a vigilante because of the soulless way he leads his life -- but the flick’s smart enough not to tie its ends too neatly by the final credits. And most importantly, the movie does not try to be more than just a tight little suspense piece. Most Hollywood movies are designed to be all things for all people, and they wind up being for no one. (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, for example, appears to be an attempt to make an action movie-buddy comedy-striptease for the whole family.)

It is ironic that Joel Schumacher, who has made a boatload of widely-disdained big bad Hollywood movies (including Batman and Robin), seems to be, with this film and Tigerland, the only director so far to utilize performances by Colin Farrell in interesting roles which make me believe he is the good actor he is hyped to be.

The moral to all of this, if there is one, I guess is that there is still worthwhile material in the realm of mass entertainment, if you know what to look for. It is tough, and you cannot always judge a book by its cover.

But you can definitely judge crap by its stink.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002