But it also means that the three women are always in charge of how they present themselves, and their love interests (played by a very ’00s collection of stars including Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc and, uh, Tom Green) are harmless puppy dogs who hang on their every word and action. That means dialogue full of silly double entendres (“You can just feel free to stick things in my slot,” Diaz’s Natalie Cook tells her mail carrier in the first movie), Diaz dancing around in superhero Underoos, and lots of slow-motion hair flips and martial arts in high heels. It might be a stretch to call these movies feminist, but with Barrymore as producer (she’s the one who recruited McG to direct) and all three stars as creative influences, they embody a very ’00s sense of girl power, somewhere near the intersection of the Spice Girls and Xena: Warrior Princess. The soundtracks are full of contemporary MTV favorites, from Korn (whose “Blind” opens the first movie) to Destiny’s Child (who recorded “Independent Women” specifically for Charlie’s Angels). His Charlie’s Angels movies (especially Full Throttle) feel like candy-colored music-video compilations, eschewing narrative logic in favor of nearly abstract celebrations of goofiness and female bonding. McG got his start as a buddy of Total Request Live favorites Sugar Ray, launching his career as a director with music videos for them and other MTV-friendly rockers, including Smash Mouth and The Offspring. The two movies in McG’s Charlie’s Angels series (the first was followed by 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) might be the quintessential blockbusters of the TRL era, representing the height of success for their director and their three stars (Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu). But that self-aware joke in the first few minutes of director McG’s film places it firmly in its time and place, as does the actor delivering it, LL Cool J in a cameo as a disguise worn by secret agent Dylan Sanders (Drew Barrymore). Coming at around the same time as the feature-film versions of Mission: Impossible, The Mod Squad, The Avengers and Wild Wild West, among others, Charlie’s Angels (based on the ABC series about a trio of buxom female crime-fighters) was indeed part of a trend of adapting TV shows from the 1960s and ’70s into big-budget movies. “Another movie from an old TV show,” sighs a character at the beginning of 2000’s Charlie’s Angels when confronted with the fictional T.J.
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