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Okay, fans of the action genre should look away now. If you know Hard Boiled inside out, can nerd-quote your way through a dozen Bruce Willis films and think that "Bullet-time is so 1999", then you will hate Charlie's Angels 2. Hate it with the kind of passion you normally reserve for subtitled Ukranian melodramas.
But the filmmakers won't care. Why? Because it's not aimed at you. This is an action movie for people who haven't seen many action movies, a cash-churning toe-dipper into the genre for teens or pissed-upgangs of guys. If you think The Matrix is too intellectual, 2 Fast 2 Furious too testosteroney and wonder why there aren't more babes in bikinis cracking knob gags in Hulk, then this is the kick-ass chick-flick for you.
Director McG isn't a fella to trouble himself with little things like common sense or consistency. Instead, as Angels Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu try to recover a stolen list of Witness Protection Program names, he settles for a scattershot approach: fire enough gags, stunts and CG set-pieces at the audience and, hell, some of them must hit.
So an opening bar fight in Mongolia rattles into that huge falling-helicopter bit from the trailer, then on into a montage of Angels in silly costumes, before slotting in a take-off of MC Hammer and a CSI spoof. Next up is a slo-mo-heavy surfing sequence and a lengthy hurtle round a dirt-bike track. And that's just the first 30 minutes.
None of it's within sight of `original' and McG clearly thinks he's cranking out an extended music video. But at least it's breathlessly executed and interspersed with a bucketload of cameos, near-the-knuckle innuendo and an icy-but-sexy turn from Demi Moore as a fallen Angel.
The summer movie of choice for overexcited 14 year olds has landed...
Neither a trip to Heaven nor an evening in Hell, Charlie's Angels 2 is a hectic supermarket sweep through the action genre. Messy, but then so is your average teenager's bedroom.
