Charlie's Angels (PG-13)
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This 2000 movie is based on a TV series from the 1970s, which I never saw, because it was before my time. But it's a show I always thought I'd have no interest in, because it seems like it'd be too exploitative for my taste. I could be wrong, though. Anyway, it's a fun kind of thing to parody. I mean, without the show, I doubt there'd be such things as Totally Spies or She Spies. Anyway... there are aspects of this movie that seem kind of 70s-like, but it's obviously set when the movie was made. And it seems like an affectionate parody of the series. But since I've never seen the show, I couldn't say for sure. I find it hard to imagine the series didn't take itself at least a bit more seriously than this movie. I mean, the movie does have some decent action, I guess, but mostly it's just a redonkulous tongue-in-cheek parody of the action genre. Of course, the girls also make decent eye candy (which is certainly in keeping with the concept of the TV show).

Um, so anyway... there are these three women, Alex Munday (Lucy Liu), Natalie Cook (Cameron Diaz), and Dylan Sanders (Drew Barrymore), who work for a mysterious millionaire they've never met, named Charlie. And there's a guy who works with them named Bosley. They're like a detective agency or whatever. And they get hired by a woman named Vivian Wood, whose partner, Eric Knox, was kidnapped. And their company's voice recognition software was stolen. The only suspect is a guy named Roger Corwin (Tim Curry), who runs a communications company called Red Star. However... there is an eventual twist to the plot, which I don't want to spoil. And so... I can't really think what else to say. You know, the movie's kind of funny, and it has some fun music, and I mentioned the action and eye candy. I dunno, I didn't like it a lot, but it was reasonably entertaining.

Followed by Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Which I liked more than this. Which made me think maybe I should rewatch this, to see if I'd underestimated it. So I did rewatch it. And I upgraded my rating of this movie, though I still think I liked the sequel more. I want to say there were some little details I liked this time around, just because they were fresh in my mind from the sequel, and it was neat to find that they weren't just random, but part of the continuity of character development. Oh, also, when I first reviewed this movie, I didn't mention that Alex had an actor boyfriend named Jason (Matt LeBlanc), and Natalie met a guy named Pete (Luke Wilson). When I watched the sequel, I didn't remember them at all, so I was a bit surprised to learn both characters had been in the first movie. Another character who was in both movies, but I didn't remember, was a fairly badass henchman whom the Angels call "Creepy Thin Man" (Crispin Glover). (Though of course he's not as badass as the Angels.) And I guess now that's really all I have to say.