I truly love McG’s first “Charlie’s Angels” movie (the one with Bill Murray, Sam Rockwell, Lucy Liu schooling the nerds to Heart’s “Barracuda” and Cameron Diaz’ swirly underoos) but was much less impressed with the sequel.
Know what’s worse than the sequel? Way worse? ABC’s new dim, lazy, woefully unoriginal and humor-challenged TV version, which is overseen by “Smallville” masterminds Miles Millar and Al Gough -- the fellows who also scripted “Shanghai Noon,” “Shanghai Knights,” “Showtime,” “Herbie Fully Loaded,” “The Mummy III” and “I Am Number Four.”
The pilot they wrote is so bland and listless it convinces me I initially cut “Smallville” too much slack 10 years ago; I’m pretty sure now I stuck with The New Adventures Of Young Clark Kent only because it namechecked my beloved DC Comics characters.
The new “Charlie’s” makes me wonder why Drew Barrymore, who produced both the movies and this series, didn’t exert more quality control.
This version of “Angels” gives us a young, muscular, shirtless, hottubbing Latino Bosley but can’t be bothered to stick “Friday Night Lights” cheerleader Minka Kelly in a bikini.
Bosley, by the way, is apparently SO good with an iPad he can use it to compel surveillance satellites to look inside any hotel room in the world, even those with kidnap victims inside. Why didn’t the kidnappers anticipate this? Oh yeah, because it’s FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE.
(And by the way, the blonde Angel in this new series is the daughter of a fictionalized Bernie Madoff, just as the blonde waitress is in “2 Broke Girls.” That jailed Ponzi schemer has really caught the imagination of TV writers!)
(And by the way again, is there any way this version can be better than the “Charlie’s Angels” TV remake Carlton Cuse wrote before he got sucked into “Lost”?)
… a much bigger mess than '70s critics ever accused the original of being....this version isn't what anyone's looking for out of either "Charlie's Angels" or just an hour of television.
... Was the clunky script for 'Charlie's Angels' also dug up from some '70s vault? It contains more than a few leaden lines, and any show that asks me to accept Minka Kelly (Lyla from 'Friday Night Lights') as an orphan who grew up to be a tough car thief is asking too much. If I want light entertainment and action-adventure featuring attractive people, I'll switch over to USA Network, where they at least try to avoid making the stories and characters faintly ridiculous. ...
... The devil is in the details of TV's latest uninspired reboot. Acting and writing? Mere afterthoughts in this noisy misfire. Even the casting lacks those essential star-is-born Farrah-mones. It's like a USA Network show after a lobotomy....
... It's unlikely anyone expected much from a revival of that eye-candy progenitor Charlie's Angels; the surprise is that you're getting so little. No one was ever going to mistake the original for, well, Prime Suspect, but it had energy and glamour and a self-aware sense of frothy fun, all of which are missing from this lugubrious update. ...
... ABC has marketed the remake with the slogan “These are not your mother’s Angels.” And that is certainly true — they are your grandmother’s Angels, throwbacks to an era when there was something contrary and cute about a woman with flowing hair and a lethal karate chop. “Prime Suspect” isn’t coy or campy, and perhaps because of it, it’s a lot more enjoyable to watch.
... The high gloss serio-silliness of the original is as dated as Farrah Fawcett's legendary hairstyle, but that doesn't stop creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar from adopting it ...
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
.... viewers have a pretty good idea of what they're going to get: action, attractive women and gorgeous locations -- but not much else. …
... This lousy, third-generation retread of the 1970s original is suitably DOA (dumb on arrival), but also offensively bland in feel. ... Now diluted by present-day TV’s cookie-cutter hustle and flow, the real duds are the Angels themselves: Rachel Taylor, Annie Ilonzeh and Minka Kelly. They come off as interchangeable affirmative-action figures who make Farrah and company look like early suffragettes who fought for the jiggle rights we now take for granted.
... The women never sparkle on camera.... Writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (“Smallville”) seem to have generated their script from a Mad Libs exercise. …
… Am I hooked? Definitely not. The underwhelming cast brings nothing to the boilerplate action. Kelly is miscast as a biker chick, and making Bosley a hunk with computer skills fails to add life.…
... instantly dated. … other than Kelly (and, admittedly, this is highly subjective) the casting appears short on the requisite sizzle to make these Angels really fly, assuming they still could. … Sorry, Charlie.
... fails miserably and offensively. ... The writing is atrocious. It’s like a spoof that suddenly took itself seriously. That ABC could have made this on the drama side and the yet-to-air “Work It” on the comedy side – far and away the two worst shows of this new season – says a lot about what it takes to get fired in this town. …
8 p.m. Thursday. ABC.
