Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

Review by All Movie Guide
This is fluffy commercialism at its core, easily discounted as yet another way to make loads of cash from an unattainable feminine ideal. That being said, the Charlie's Angels film franchise turns this ideal into a superhero movie, and the result is more exciting and thrilling than many of its comic book-based contemporaries. With the self-mocking humor, fantasy fighting sequences, dance club pulse, and standard crime-fighting plot, it feels a lot like watching The Powerpuff Girls, only with Cosmo-style sex appeal. With so much flesh on display, the überwomen are granted an even higher propensity for makeup, costumes, and spiked high heel boots. The degree of exaggeration is such that it all becomes a kind of grotesque fashion show, albeit with the trappings of a regular macho action movie. This time around, the superheroes even get supervillains; in keeping with the zero tolerance rule for body fat, Demi Moore is quite repulsive as the ex-Angel vigilante, while Justin Theroux makes a stylishly psychotic ex-boyfriend in a rip-off of Robert De Niro in Cape Fear. Director McG doesn't hide his music video skills while pumping up the soundtrack at every opportunity for a showy, explosion-filled trifle that at least has the decency to know it's a trifle, as parodied by Matthew LeBlanc's action movie premiere of "Maximum Extreme II." Upping her salary to a Julia Roberts level, the well-worn comic persona of Cameron Diaz manages a few good moments, despite her horribly thin and unrealistic body. Other than the loathsome subplot involving John Cleese and the unfortunate addition of Bernie Mac, this sequel improves upon its predecessor as an outlet for girlishly giddy delusions of grandeur. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide