Charlie's Angels have come a long way, baby!
No longer the 'three little girls who went to the police academy' of the Seventies television series, these 21st-century gumshoe Barbies kick serious butt. They've upgraded their firepower, mastered the most acrobatic of martial arts, speak Japanese, operate cutting-edge computer technology, drive racing cars, sky-dive and ride helicopter-launched missiles.
But don't despair - the new girls can still work that slow-motion hair toss and sparkling, toothy grin. What's more their butts are tighter and harder and the camera takes full advantage.
America is loving it and millions are flocking to see Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu flaunt their post-feminist, kitsch machismo. What better diversion from the all-American presidential election fiasco - these chicks could sort out George W. Bush, Al Gore and their teams of lawyers with their hands tied behind their backs. All those teenagers and twentysomethings who didn't vote on Tuesday were probably sitting in cinemas watching the three Angels focus minds with a few stiletto-heeled high kicks instead.
Charlie's Angels boasted a phenomenal first weekend at the box office, with a gross of $40.1 million. Sony launched its kick-butt Barbie flick in 3,037 cinemas nationwide - with an average return of some $13,213 per venue. After last November's Toy Story 2, it's the second best non-summer movie opening in American box-office history. But that's not all - the film has been boasting a $2.96m daily gross, even through the stranger-than-fiction ballot box turmoil.
'It's great, I loved it,' says Hannah Misol, a 23-year-old radio news producer. 'It's tongue-in-cheek - lots of cheeks - and very clever. It pokes fun at all the established cultural icons; sure, you have to check your brains at the door, but who says every movie has to be intellectual. This is just great, mindless entertainment.'
All the reviewers here seem to agree. 'This is schlock fun,' says the august Washington Post . 'It treads that fine line between clever parody and over-the-top exaggeration. Les gals are dynamic. They know the tongue-in-cheek rules of the game: look hot for the men (and sharp for the women) but use that "babular" exterior shell as a decoy for private investigation.'
Or this from Variety: 'It will be the rare viewer, male and female, who won't enjoy the sheer visual and visceral pleasure of watching Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu strut, slink, kick, dance and vamp their way through this splashy femme empowerment fantasy... the sassy chickpic appeal of this rambunctious, high-octane, latex-thin contempo take on one of the Seventies' most popular television series.'
Today's leather and gold lamé bikini-clad Angels make Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith look like disco-age Nancy Drews; the new breed are surefire James Bondettes, and like 007, they don't take themselves too seriously - even as they stop at nothing to get the bad guys.
Self-parodied feminine wiles somehow jiggle nicely with all those impossibly daring action sequences and Matrix -like kung fu manoeuvres, choreographed by Cheung-Yan Yuen, fight arranger on countless Hong Kong martial arts flicks. Directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol, a Hollywood newcomer known up till now for his dancing Gap ads and music videos, and written by too many people to credit (17 all told), the only thing you really need to know is that the babes regularly best the bad guys - and when they're not fighting the evil gun-toting, sword-wielding bad guys, they're focusing on their respective love interests.
The men, truth be told, provide the same decorative function as their female counterparts in traditional action-man flicks. Variety says: 'Gorgeous, sexy and fun [the Angels] can do just about anything but find men who are anywhere near their level'.
Toby Miller, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at New York University, says: 'The genius of this movie is that it plays to both sides of the gender divide. The women I've spoken to love the sexiness. They are much more comfortable about using it, exploiting it to their own ends while parodying it at the same time. And it wouldn't work without having autonomy and power.'
Miller has been studying the Angels' phenomenon for the British Film Institute, for which he is writing the action-adventure segment of next year's BFI Handbook. He says: 'Everyone thought the original TV series was a "jiggle" programme, and it was scorned by feminists who thought it was stereotypical, exploitative. But Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate were strong, independent women, and the celluloid version is a 25-year update of the same thing.
'This time around, they can do stunts like the best of them [but] they still have to look hot. What was also appealing about the TV series is still in play now: there is a real bond between the women, it's almost like a Thelma and Louise girl-buddy flick in this way: what matters is their solidarity.'
In real life, the three actresses live up to the buddy image, hanging all over each other, playing with each other's hair and talking in unison, as they travel around the country, relentlessly plugging the movie. They are adamant that's how they behaved on the movie's mega-long and physically demanding shoot, too - despite the Hollywood gossip about angry flare-ups and bitchiness.
The three stars also have a lot more power in real life than the stars of the TV series. Farrah, Kate and Jaclyn were unknowns when the show premiered in September 1976. Cameron Diaz is a Hollywood power in her own right, after the success of There's Something About Mary and Being John Malkovich; Lucy Liu has made her name in the groundbreaking David E. Kelley series Ally McBeal; and Barrymore, who was only 18 months old when the world met the original Angels, is the co-producer of the movie
'I like jiggle! I do,' insisted Barrymore in an interview for E! Online. 'I'm not a torch-carrying feminist, but I love women... I think what's great is if you can have intelligence and capability as your foundation and be fun and sexy on top of it.'
That she also happens to be a movie mogul adds a new spin to the more than suggestive spread Barrymore has posed for in Rolling Stone magazine. There she is, pretty much naked, pouring milk down her back.
'She seems to be saying, 'I see no reason to hide my sexuality, my body - I want to celebrate it,' says Miller. 'And all the women I know, even those who thought such a spectacle was tragic in the Seventies, love it. It's a nudge-nudge, wink-wink parody.'
Co-producer Leonard Goldberg, who produced the TV series with Aaron Spelling of Dynasty and Beverly Hills 90210 fame, claims the original programmes were the 'beginning of the empowerment of women within popular culture'.
Some may disagree, but there's no disputing the fact that Charlie's Angels, the movie, has captured the Zeitgeist: today's America is intoxicated with female machismo - witness the following of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel and Xena: Warrior Princess .
Sony, which owns the worldwide rights to the Charlie's Angels franchise, says the film will hit the big screens in Britain this month.
