June 29, 2003

Giggling Girls & SloMo

Perhaps Cinecultist's (pretty negligible) testosterone got in the way of critical distance but CC really enjoyed Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. We don't usually do this -- as we prize ourselves on our far-thinking independent opinions 'round here -- but we checked in with the critic roundup on Rotten Tomatoes to see if the rest of the lads agreed. They found it to be 41% rotten so far. Hmmm.

We're talking about such statements as "what the picture represents, in a very real way, is the death of cinema." according to Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central and "the worst movie of the year" according to Chuck Schwartz of Cranky Critic. Who are these people? People with computers and opinions, that's about all CC can tell from a bit of cursory web research. However, even Elvis Mitchell at the Times says, "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is like eating a bowl of Honeycomb drenched in Red Bull -- a dizzying mouthful of unabashed silliness that leads to an equally precipitous crash once the buzz wears off after the film's first hour." Double hmmm.

Here's the thing -- CC liked it despite being outside the movie's projected commercial demographic. The girls are cute, they kick ass, there's lots of highly stylized camera work (McG HEART slo-mo), a pounding pop soundtrack (including that Pink single, "Feel Good Time" that we downloaded when we got home) and various campy villains. Sometimes, it is okay to like insubstantial crap. It's not going to change the face of cinema or result in any sort of apocalypse if every movie we watch, especially in the summer, isn't particularly mentally challenging. With that said, CC plans to watch Friday Night and Dragon Inn this week, just to balance out the lost brain cells.

Posted by karen at June 29, 2003 10:12 PM