A fast-paced full throttle full of, yes, ‘T’s & A’s’

You can’t think of the ’70’s without recalling how huge a hit Charlie’s Angels was during that decade. It wasn’t just that the show topped the ratings, it created such a buzz that extended beyond TV-dom. Perhaps, in the decade when Helen Reddy triumphantly sang, "I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore," it was just a matter of time before a show featuring Woman Power would go big-time. Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were gorgeous women but by golly, they sure could kick ass!

A high schooler back then, I remember reading a newsweekly magazine which said that one reason Charlie’s Angels hit it big was that it was essentially a T & A show. In my (then) convent-girl innocence, I had to ask around what "T & A" meant (it turned out to be "Tits and Ass"). Though I watched the show at that time clearly delighted by the way the Angels trounced the bad guys, on hindsight I’d have to agree that the magazine was correct – to a certain extent – in its observation.

In one scene in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, original Angel Jaclyn Smith (doing a cameo) tells Dylan (Drew Barrymore), "An Angel is not made. Like a diamond, she is found." Well, as a co-producer of the new Charlie’s Angel , Drew apparently also took the same advice to heart by keeping true to the formula used by original producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is essentially still a T & A show. But circa 2003, it is a T & A showed carried out to the max that its PG-13 rating will allow it to. Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore shake their T’s and A’s at every conceivable opportunity – at the beach, on stage, at home, and even in Mongolia! – as the secret agent Angels employed by the (still) elusive Charlie (voiced by John Forsythe). And unlike their ’70’s counterparts, they even get to show off T’s & A’s in funky dance numbers which are quite cute in their execution, especially that showing Cameron Diaz dancing to MC Hammer‘s Can’t Touch This.

Now of course, this T & A bent is good news for the guys. As for women like myself, what makes the movie worthwhile is experiencing – albeit vicariously – that same sense of wonderment we felt in the l970’s while watching three women who could outwit, outplay and outlast (to borrow from Survivor) the bad guys while wearing such hip clothes and stylish hairstyles and makeup.

This T & A chick flick dipped in MTV (pop, rock, and hip-hop spice up nearly all the scenes of the movie) features fight scenes unmistakably inspired by The Matrix. The fight scenes are grittier and the antagonists much, much more meaner (Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate were never hurled or thrashed around this badly!). There’s one scene in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle many women might just want to do – the chance for a full revenge of sorts on a former lover by thrashing him mano a mano.

Now of course, feminists might just protest that therein lies this movie’s paradox. If it really celebrates women empowerment, why does it "exploit" those very things (the "T & A" part) that women have been protesting for so long as being exploitative, as being the stuff that reduce women to playthings? Moviegoers will have to answer this for themselves – that is, if they get past being beguiled by the kooky Natalie (Cameron Diaz), the free spirited Dylan (Drew Barrymore) and the exotic Alex (Lucy Liu) who it seems can do just about anything under the sun from sleuthing deductively ala Sherlock Holmes to going head to head with the guys in extreme sports. All these in the pursuit of two rings on which are encoded the identities of witnesses on the FBI’s witness protection program and which must not fall into the wrong hands.

As for me, there was something fulfilling about seeing the face, form and figure of villain Demi Moore (as fallen Angel Madison Lee) whose appearance here might just convince one and all that a woman can still look at the top of her form at 40. And Bernie Mac (as middle man Bosley) brings even more sass and cool to the Angels’ already chic coolness.

This Charlie’s Angels is a fast-paced, full-throttle (aptly enough) chick flick that – surprise, surprise – turns out to be a buddy movie, too. This time around, the friendship rather than the mere partnership of the Angels is also in focus. That’s good because this gives the Angels more depth, but what’s not so good is that the friendship angle is still not too fully threshed out. You still get the feeling it could have been more warmly told.

But then, "warmth" has never really described Charlie’s Angels . In the end, it still boils down to fantastic looks, head turning style and fashion, kicking butts and yes... T & A.