I've been asked by several people why it's taken me this long to write a review of Charlie's Angels. Truth is, I figured everyone understood how much fun the movie was so anything I could say about the film would be superfluous. Still, in a world where people are still laboring under the delusion that The Matrix was a good movie there may be a need to state the obvious. Going along this same line of reasoning I have to explain why I decided to dredge up a discussion of The Matrix for this review as well. I had mistakenly thought that The Matrix would quickly fade from the public consciousness, but it's struck a chord with many people for some unknown reason. In spite of the fact that both of these movies are popular and have made buckets of money I only liked one of them. Why is this? [Yeah, I know this isn't the best reason to link these two movies, but it's my page so I'm going to do what I want. This is also another one of my "free association" reviews, which is a fancy way of saying I'm making this sucker up as I go.]

The primary role of movies as a form of entertainment is to, well, entertain. This is a basic premise but I'm amazed how many movies either don't understand this concept or somehow lose sight of it. One can easily come up with a list of movies that mistake product placement for set design and flat one liners and attempts at creating new catch phrases for dialogue. All these are scatter shot and ill conceived attempts at amusing the audience instead of trying for something more challenging such as making sure the film's story is, if not logical, at least entertaining. Charlie's Angels sets out to be a goofy action movie and it succeeds admirably. In spite of what some movie producers think, this is not an easy trick to pull off. Throughout the film Charlie's Angels stays true to it's jiggly, pop music drenched roots. Similarly, The Matrix sets out to be a serious, dour, metaphorically heavy film and by doing so it successfully manages to stack the deck against itself. It's the ability of these two movies to make the viewer believe in the film's reality that allows one movie to succeed, while dooming the other.

By making sure the audience is in on the joke from the beginning, Charlie's Angels is free to be as silly as it feels is necessary. No matter how many improbable costumes the leads wear or the huge number of insane kung-fu fights they become involved in, the actors always manage to have a "Check us out, we're in a movie!" look of glee in their eye. By successfully straddling the line between knowing self-mockery and being a straight action/comedy, Charlie's Angels manages to be better than the sum of it's parts. Usually this sort of flippant attitude renders the film unwatchable, so it's a credit to Charlie's Angels that it actually manages to be such a well done bit of disposable entertainment. Plus, it has Bill Murray in turtle necks and Nehru jackets and three, count 'em, three bad-ass female characters. How can you go wrong with that?

While attention to story-line usually helps a movie, with The Matrix it's the movie's downfall. When I went to see Charlie's Angels I was expecting the worst but was pleasantly surprised; it's lack of pretenses -or even comprehensibility- made it work. Similarly, I went into The Matrix knowing very little about the film so my initial impressions were unclouded by having foreknowledge about the film's plot. As a result I could feel myself becoming more and more removed from the picture as it unspooled.

The trouble is, since I did pay attention to the plot the only real reaction I could come up with was to become alienated. The movie asked me to accept the idea that robots had not only plugged in all of humanity up to a big incubator thing and were using them as batteries, but they had hooked up their minds to this huge virtual reality machine -the matrix- where everyone dreamt they were living in New York. Okay, fine, I can accept that; I'm willing to believe any fool thing as long as the story is entertaining. Trouble is, the presentation of The Matrix was so straightforward and so serious it invited the viewer to focus on the plot which was a mistake since the story-line couldn't stand that kind of scrutiny.

While I can overlook silly things like the idea of using people as batteries [couldn't the robots of found something that would generate more energy like elephants or, in tribute to the old potato clock, different types of produce to glean energy from?] but the virtual reality world concept left me flat. The moment I found out all the movie's action took place inside a computer generated image the dramatic tension drained away. I wasn't watching people in a life or death struggle, I was watching people playing a video game. I was so removed from the film I began to wonder why if the characters could slightly alter the computer reality around them why didn't they go whole hog and try to grow wings or breathe fire or something other than just going around kicking people while simultaneously shooting two guns? Why is the only countermeasure that the robots can come up with is a couple of guys in drab suits? Why didn't anyone express any regret about all the poor innocent security guards that get gunned down? These and other questions kept rattling around in my head when I was supposed to be focused on the movie.

Heck, as someone pointed out to me, the movie doesn't even offer a good justification for why the characters would want to be free from the virtual reality prison. What charms did the "real" world offer that compared to the virtual world? If this movie had been made in the late 1960's-early-1970's I suspect more of the characters would of chosen the much more enticing virtual world.

The conundrum that the characters are only heroic when they are inside the prison they are trying to escape is baffling. The lead character Neo [Keannu Reaves] is heralded as the "chosen one" who will lead humanity out of it's enslavement but his only talent seems to be that he can crunch code really well, allowing him to goof around with the coding of the virtual reality. In the end he's not so much a savior as a walking video game cheat code. I wanted to like The Matrix but I couldn't no matter what level I viewed it at. If nothing else the idea of Keannu Reaves as a Christ figure should be hysterical but even that concept couldn't pull me through. The only explanation I can think of for the film's popularity is that there are a lot more computer types out there looking for an action oriented role model than I thought.

Finally, there's not much separating these two movies. They both set out to tell a story and, on a technical level, they both succeed. In the end it's the individual tastes and feelings of the reviewer that decide which one is recommended. That, and the fact that Charlie's Angels is the cooler of the two helps push it over the top.

Questions, comments, and kung-fu kicks can be directed to gleep9@hotmail.com. Now take the red pill, the blue pill, and a handful of those funky little green ones and stagger on back to either the Second Movie or Main page.