CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE

The intrepid, scantily clad trio battles heroically to shield participants in the F.B.I.’s Witness Protection Program from exposure.

CAST: Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore, Bernie Mac, Justin Theroux, Robert Patrick, Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Crispin Glover, John Cleese, Shia LaBeouf, Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Jaclyn Smith, The Voice of John Forsythe

DIRECTOR: McG

''‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ is less a movie than some misguided hybrid of Maxim magazine and a videogame: mindless action mixed with soft-core titillation, geared to the short attention span…The film's best special effect? The medically redesigned Demi Moore in a bikini. (Otherwise, she walks through the film with an expression that says, ‘They're really paying me for this?’)…Any movie that wastes the considerable comedic talent of Bernie Mac (while trying to emphasize the virtually nonexistent skills of Drew Barrymore) should be considered a crime against nature." --Marshall Fine, The Journal News

"As insistent as it is skillful — and it is very skillful — it does all it can to pound you into enjoying yourself. The result is rather like being force-fed a meal of your favorite foods by the Terminator…This film's accomplishments may be formidable, but they're also unavoidably slick, mechanical and not a little cold. No matter how frequently Angels Alex (Lucy Liu), Dylan (Drew Barrymore) and Natalie (Cameron Diaz) ostentatiously throw back their heads and roar with delight, their film feels removed from any genuine pleasure. In a word, its thrills are joyless, its laughter hollow…It's all supposed to be good fun, but why does ‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ feel like it's throttling the audience, choking the life out of simple entertainment by trying so hard to make pleasure a business?" --Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times

"If Maxim made a movie, it might well turn out like the proudly airheaded, incoherent, endlessly pandering -- yet fitfully entertaining – ‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’…This is a flick whose concept of female empowerment is one of the scantily clad Angels stealing a security pass while giving its owner a lap dance -- while another Angel does a pole dance as an added distraction…What passes for character development here is when one of its villains -- played by a frightfully stiff if spectacularly preserved (or reconstructed) Demi Moore -- suddenly, out of nowhere, lasciviously licks one of the Angel's faces." --Lou Lumenick, The New York Post

"‘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…‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ is like digging through the world's grooviest thrift store treasures; even rummaging pirates won't care if the booty is on duty." --Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

"The charm of ‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ is spread like an even tan over a series of full-bore, semi-erotic action sequences that are as exciting as they are ridiculous. This heavenly sequel is infused with an irresistibly joyous spirit that simply cannot be faked." --Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News

"Action figures with figures: You can fit the appeal of the Charlie's Angels series in a cracked nutshell. But ‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ is so hyperactive, disjointed and downright foolish, you can't even appreciate the pulchritude…What's the point of whipping these beauties into fighting trim if the action is so tricked up they might as well be computer-generated? Of course, when Demi Moore turns up in her flagrant bid for a comeback as a fallen Angel, she isn't so much computer-generated as machine-tooled; all the inviting furriness and fuzziness of her first stint as a movie star has been burned away for that instant-cliche terminatrix look…‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ isn't a full-bodied comedy, and it isn't a bona fide action movie, either. It just makes a facetious spectacle of itself." --Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

"Director McG (of the previous ‘Angels’ movie) is a sponge: Everything you see, you've seen before, whether it was directed by Steven Spielberg or was burped out of a video game. What the sometimes Joseph McGinty Nichol brings to the party is essentially a belief that less self-restraint is more…‘Full Throttle’ has a loose grip on reality/ gravity and a great sense of humor. It also has Diaz, who is a truly gifted physical comedian…If there's a drag on this balloon, it's Demi Moore, making her first film appearance since the lamentable ‘G.I. Jane’…Moore has great abs but is so humorless, and the treatment of her is so adoring (the Beach Boys trill as the slo-mo camera lingers), she's like someone's ex showing up at his/her wedding." --John Anderson, Newsday

"‘Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle’ is as bogus as an inflatable bra, indicating a film franchise that is already running short of ideas. It takes all that was fun about the frothy original and cranks it up to full volume and warp speed, assisted by computer gimmicks that strip away any semblance of reality… Demi Moore is Madison Lee, an ex-Angel gone bad, whose bikini-clad bod demonstrates what $400,000 worth of cosmetic surgery buys…It gets to the point where it seems the whole purpose of the exercise is to have Diaz, Barrymore and Liu play dress-up and act out their favourite movie moments." --Peter Howell, Toronto Star

"It's flashy, it's often funny, and it resembles a movie so much that soon it demands something resembling motivation, character, a plot, anything to explain the seemingly arbitrary connections between the stunts and the skits…What's left is kinetically dazzling and utterly nonsensical, a self-aware caricature of an action movie. McG is simply too cool to take any of it seriously, and too dazzled by the noise, the music and the empty spectacle to realize that the joke is on him." --Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Like the 2000 picture, ‘Full Throttle’ was directed by the filmmaker called McG, who speaks with pride of his background in the world of commercials and music videos. That's certainly a good training ground for movies like this, where what counts isn't the meanings or emotions of the story, just the moment-by-moment impact of each flashy shot. He's done his job with energy to spare, if little in the way of artistry…All of the actresses are fun to watch, and as much attention appears to have been lavished on their outfits and hairdos as on their high-flying fight scenes." --David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor