"Charlie's Angels" is one of those films that might have had a crack at being quite good, or at least bearable, if the screenwriter -- or the several thousand screenwriters -- had borne in mind a principle that one would think would be immediately obvious: "Action films need to have tension." Ok, you know in your heart that the hero's going to win the day, but at least you're interested to find out how it's going to happen, how the situation will be resolved, and so forth.

I won't discuss the plot in any depth, because it's so facile. There are three women who are employed by a boss they've never met and do missions for people for money. They do a mission. An obvious twist happens. They kill some people. The end.

As with many action films, the heroes have ridiculously over-the-top abilities. In this case, it's established early on in the film that the girls can do pretty much ANYTHING. What's unlike most action films is that this never changes. There is no flaw in their abilities, no weaknesses, no mistakes ever made. There is no area in which they're not competent. There is truly no reason for any other human being to exist on the planet.

Now even this might be ok if it were done in a suitably spoofy way, but it isn't. It comes across as nothing more than screenwriting laziness. It makes you wonder if one writer wrote the lead up to putting one of them in a dangerous situation, and then another writer took over, thought, "I can't do anything with this," and wrote the easiest possible resolution. Over and over.

One of the girls gets into a game of chicken in a racing car with a villain. She...uhh...wins. She doesn't do anything special, she just wins.

One of the girls gets shot. By that stage in the film, I guarantee you that the feeble attempt to make you think she might actually be in danger will fall flat on its face. And then you go back, and...what did she do? Wear a bullet proof vest? Load a blank into the gun in advance? Uh, no, she...dodged the bullet! Wahey! I bet that took the screenwriter a long while to come up with.

The one detailed resolution in the film doesn't make sense. The girls have to get past an intricate security system protecting a computer. To do this, they need a handprint and a retina scan, which they obtain in forty seconds and two cut-scenes involving information they should have never been able to get. Then they actually break in. I think the most entertainment you can get from this film is spotting the number of ridiculous flaws in that sequence. Among them: The final stage in the security system was never disabled, so technically the directors who are supposed to get in can't approach their own computer (actually, that's probably the technical staff being sensible). One of the girls uses a colored suit to be invisible to a camera while operating a switch, because of course it's not in the least suspicious that a switch in a camera-tracked area gets pushed while the camera shows nobody there. The assertion is made that you're in contact with the floor for less time if you're doing gymnastic pivots across it than if you simply stand on tiptoe and walk quickly. (When they describe the rules for the security floor, try it at home, and you'll find that anyone could easily cross it by walking on tiptoes.)

The other problem is that the Angels themselves are so unlikeable that not only is there no point in anyone else existing on the planet, but sharing a planet with such people is so unpleasant that nonexistence could be a preferable alternative. They are generally prissy, overprivileged, egotistical, and full of fake morality. Their backgrounds as explained early on are basically "Here are a bunch of posh little missies who must be really good and trustworthy because they're attractive and I employ them and I have a nice voice." The few attempts to make them seem human all fall flat on their faces; they take the time to show one of them going out on a date and...oh, surprise! She gets invited to dance on the stage (despite apparently never having been to the club before) and winds up leading the entire club in a routine! I never saw that coming.

By the "fake morality" I mean such things as telling their client that it would be "unethical" to give him access to the data they took from the computer. The fact that the Angels broke in and stole the data not only means it's "ethical" for THEM to have it, it also gives them the right to judge ethics regarding it! At least yer average action hero sees what he's/she's doing as "bad, but a means to an end." But, of course, for the Angels at that stage, the "end" is nothing more than "getting paid"...yep, let's not forget this film is about a group of violent mercenaries who, after the Blindingly Obvious Twist, are revealed to have attacked and injured numerous entirely innocent people. That's heroic. Oh, and at least one of them manipulates a random unattractive guy into doing stuff for her. Oh, and near the start of the film, there's a *hilarious* joke about how unattractive people who're manipulated in this way might kill themselves! Ha ha ha ha.

Ok, enough. We're shooting fish in a barrel here. If you like spotting this kind of thing in bad films, this film will be overjoying for you. Just don't grind your teeth too hard.