Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle - A Ballet in Disguise
The continuation of “Charlie’s Angels” suggests the existence of fan clubs where it’s cool to flaunt one’s inclusion in the mythology: “Well, last time Bill Murray was better than this black guy.” We probably don’t have such fan clubs. No one at the premiere in “Pushkinsky” won against the entertainer who asked: “Where did John Cleese become famous? Where do we all know him from?”. We certainly don’t all know Cleese, who played the slow-witted parent of Lucy Liu in “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” “Monty Python,” where he really became famous, is not our mythology. Nevertheless, “Charlie’s Angels” is becoming more and more familiar. The sequel has approached its Russian origins.
“And also in the field of ballet, we are ahead of the whole planet,” – everyone here knows that. Almost thirty years ago, the author of the idea for the television series “Charlie’s Angels” was film star Natalie Wood (“West Side Story”). To this day, the deceased star’s husband, as her sole heir, is suing the current screenwriters for not paying him royalties. However, in reality, Wood’s name was Natalia Gordina, and she was the daughter of Russian emigrants from the first post-revolutionary wave. This information is not accidental, since the sequel to “Charlie’s Angels” has only approached the classic musical in an American way (mention of Fred Astaire, tunes from “The Sound of Music,” quotes from “Singin’ in the Rain”). In our opinion, it is definitely becoming a classic ballet.
Plot? Who Needs Plot?
The plot is becoming less and less important. Three girls without bones and gravity are this time chasing two titanium rings, on which all the information of the Witness Protection System is recorded. All the mafias of the world want to buy the rings at once in order to deal with those who once surrendered them, and now have changed their names and places of residence. Well, in the course of events, one of the girls turned out to be the same changed one (Drew Barrymore’s “Dylan” used to be called Helen Zad, with corresponding jokes, honestly and boringly dubbed into Russian). And she surrendered “her first” – a crooked-legged Irishman who served his term and is now dreaming of revenge. Demi Moore, a former “angel” named Madison Lee, and now kind of “fallen,” joins the revenge for some reason. But all this, in principle, as well as the girls’ relationships with other characters, could have been completely different.
Balletic Action
It is important that the sequel to “Charlie’s Angels” is filmed purely in a ballet style. Not only are the girls constantly dancing in the frame (either under the TV, or in a nightclub, or at a party a la “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”). No, the whole structure of this action is not cinematic at all. There are different adagios, pas de deux, the exit of the corps de ballet, battements and tendu battements. And the fact that their material is windsurfing and motorcycle racing, port fights and highway bobsleighing, so Soviet ballets were about the Chinese revolution (“The Red Poppy”), the construction of hydroelectric power stations (“Angara”), the development of virgin and fallow lands (“Asel”). The material here is extreme sports, which is emphasized even in the text and is fashionable now in America. And if you treat the action in advance not as a movie, you can watch it completely calmly.
Technical Prowess and Theatrical Flair
Windsurfing is staged worse than in the last Bond film, motorcycle races suffer from the same thing as in the recent imax “Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk” (to give them reality, you need mostly general plans with the environment, and everything is filmed, on the contrary, in close-ups), but there are still trump cards. With completely computer-generated fights and races, Lucy Liu on a highway board, for example, is still cool. This is a good dance variation. A wonderful arabesque – when Cameron Diaz got stuck in the men’s toilet, resting her feet on the partitions. Demi Moore demonstrates an elegant jump. Finally, the entire theatrical entourage is exactly observed.
The Ballerinas
The ballerinas, as expected, are for every male taste. Their types are now completely honed. Cameron Diaz (born in 1972, 175 cm tall) is a natural blonde, flaunts her long legs, and is the most plastic. Drew Barrymore (born in 1975, 163 cm tall) is a red-haired bitch, with lush forms of bust and ass, and innate aristocracy. Lucy Liu (born in 1968, 160 cm tall) is a fragile oriental exotic, ageless, unisex. All the way they change hairstyles and toilets, as on the podium. There is something to compare. That is, it is no coincidence that the hall of “Pushkinsky” was full of balding pot-bellied brunettes with rings, a characteristic accent and non-switched-off cell phones, just as most defiles are filled with them.
Demi Moore: A Worthy Addition
Finally, it is even possible to compare Demi Moore, who appeared after three years of not filming, with the ballerinas. Moreover, we are simply required to do this when they film her and Diaz in bikinis on the ocean shore in close-up. Well, for her, forty years is not a woman’s age at all. There is no waist in the figure, but the stomach is flat, the skin is good, and by the age of forty, something has appeared that other ballerinas do not have – a look, a strong look in addition to beautiful eyes. Even if the look needed a kilogram of “Max Factor” on the film, Demi still does the splits without any cosmetics. And she also has humor – as at the very beginning she personally put Bruce Willis to death.
The Spectacle
Everything else – broken cars, Mongolian arats, rockets, chains, holds and flamethrowers – is like in all expensive action movies (budget 120 million dollars) and is the least interesting. McG made not an action movie at all, but a show ballet taking into account the film.
Yes, he destroys cinema, but he has at least something to present in return.