Poorly composited promotional material like this is what doomed Charlie’s Angels. Everything’s there — dresses, guns, pretty ladies — but even a layman can tell that not everything is really there. And what’s the deal with that triangle thing? Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.
3/10 Charlie’s Angels was immediately an interesting idea, taking old sexploitation from the ‘70s and repurposing it as a movie about, by and for women. This is readily apparent in the marketing, which doesn’t seem to be aimed at moviegoers at all – it looks like a commercial for a feature-length commercial, emphasizing fashion, feminine confidence and power, dancing and music from fluffy pop artists who are nowhere near as popular with men. Then writer/director/producer/star Elizabeth Banks put her foot in her mouth over it, and the experiment’s no fun anymore.
In Charlie’s Angels, engineer Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott) is working on Calisto, a magical icosahedron that can provide renewable energy, but also sometimes turns itself into a bomb. When her company tries to go to market before the product is safe, she turns to the authorities – in this case, the Townsend Agency, an international collective of women spies. Houghlin is joined by angels Sabina Wilson (Kristen Stewart) and Jane Kano (Ella Balinska) and a Bosley (Banks) to stop Calisto from going public.
