CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE

The end theme, and really the manifesto, of CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE is Pink's "Feel Good Time" (which is also included as a music video on the DVD). Relieved of the weight of having to introduce the concept and characters, the sequel is allowed to simply become a film-as-party where Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore want to dance with you. Seen in that light, though there's a temptation to dismiss this type of film as a "mere entertainment", it's difficult not to fall in love with this movie, which is a heck of a lot more entertaining than the TV show it's based on ever was.

The plot involves the theft of two titanium rings encoded with files from the Witness Protection Program - an event that has special resonance for Angel Dylan Saunders (Barrymore), since she's been in the program herself. Before joining the Townshend Agency, she testified in a murder trial, convicting boyfriend Seamus O'Grady (Justin Theroux, in a hilarious spoof of CAPE FEAR and other revenge flicks). After stealing the rings, ex-Angel Madison Lee (Demi Moore) gives them to O'Grady to lure Dylan and the Angels into a trap, keeping them all busy while she decodes the data for sale to various organized crime families. The other Angels have less threatening subplots this time around: Natalie (Diaz) is concerned that her boyfriend Pete (Luke Wilson) might be preparing to propose, while Alex (Liu) tries to deal with revealing her job to her father (John Cleese), though through a misunderstanding involving her boyfriend Jason (Matt LeBlanc), Mr. Munday is led to believe that the Angels are high-priced call girls.

The machinations of this plot lead our heroes into all sorts of outlandish situations from motocross racing to exotic dancing all of which are sure to involve outrageous disguises, parodies of other movies, and high-energy action sequences. A lot of effort is put into keeping the identity of the villain a mystery, all of which turns out to be a waste since the trailer and much of the hype attending the film's release identified Moore as the culprit all along. As everyone is required to remark, she still looks fantastic in a bikini, and makes the most of her antagonist role. Bernie Mac, brought in to replace the absent Bill Murray, supplies plenty of wisecracks as the new Bosley. And just about every scene is bolstered by cool music on the soundtrack and amusing cameos. It's all a hell of a lot of fun as long as one doesn't fight the correct party atmosphere.

That atmosphere extends to the DVD extras, a mishmash of the usual features given a new twist and some surprise innovations. The party mood occasionally leaves the commentrak turned in by director Joe "McG" Nichol as he makes pains to explain as many nuances of plot and storytelling devices as he can, perhaps in an effort to distance himself from his rep as a "music video director". At one point he gets rather defensive, referring to how he plans to continue "kicking down doors" to bring "a new cinematic language". Dude should chill out. He knows how to cover all the necessary dramatic and storytelling bases, and his ability to combine music and imagery is one of the things that makes his movies fun. However, giving him a telestrator is a bit of a waste this is a great idea in general, but the fast editing techniques used here mean that whatever he points out visually isn't onscreen very long, often disappearing before he can circle them.

McG's connection to the music is exploited in a "DVD Jukebox" section, which has him and music supervisor John Houlihan introducing clips, explaining how the music was chosen. Other sections are given over to the usual documentation of production details like costuming and design, but more fun comes from features like the one that identifies some of the cameo performers. One of the most potentially enjoyable features is the "Angel-Vision Trivia Track", a pop-up style text annotation of fun facts and branching links to location scouting footage. These annotations are always fun, but this one loses quite a bit due to a poor font choice. Yellow on white is rarely legible, but the display font chosen makes for an eyesore.

Points should be taken off for not getting the stars to do a commentary, but a second commentrak is given over to the writers for a change, and the trio of talents assigned to various script drafts give an interesting account of how things got in or out of the movie. Speaking of which: in case you're wondering what the "unrated" label means on this version, calm down. It only means that the fight scenes are a bit rougher than allowed by the required PG-13 rating. There's no naked Angel mud wrestling scenes restored here.