Charlie's Angels Case Study

“In this day and age, a film about female action heroes must refuse to take itself even remotely seriously in order to be accepted by the masses. American audiences can accept Tom Cruise breaking into a highly secured vault, but Cameron Diaz doing the same thing must be presented as a campy joke.” – Scott Mendelson discussing Charlie’s Angels back in 2000 for his college newspaper.

That quote comes from my original (mostly positive) review of McG’s initial Charlie’s Angels theatrical adaptation from back in 2000. So yes, I really have always been kind of obnoxious about this stuff going back at least fifteen years. I bring this up because, as you’ve probably heard thanks to The Hollywod Reporter, Sony is rebooting the Charlie’s Angels franchise as another would-be film series. The big news is that they are in talks with Elizabeth Banks to direct the film, which of course is based off of the popular 1970′s television series which turned Farrah Fawcett into an icon. So yes, with the upcoming Young Adult Fantasy Franchise entry Red Queen, Pitch Perfect 3, and this would-be Charlie’s Angels project on her plate, it would seem that I don’t have to write any whiny screeds about Ms. Banks not getting her due payoff for directing Pitch Perfect 2 to a $280
The cast was game, McG clearly knew how to shoot and edit a flashy action sequence (and he loves those long takes), and it had a nice assemblage of colorful heroes (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu) and colorful villains (Sam Rockwell, Kelly Lynch, and Crispin Glover) with a Tim Curry cameo to boot. The film is lively, colorful, and clearly a labor of love for producer Drew Barrymore (who insisted that her angels not use guns). Despite a troubled production (among other things, Bill Murray and Lucy Liu didn’t get along) and a delay from summer to November of 2000, the film snagged a $40 million debut and eventually earned $264m on a $93m