Charlie's Angels (PG-13, 2000)

CHARLIE'S ANGELS are three female detectives who solve cases brought to them by the mysterious Charlie, who communicates with them only by speakerphone. The Angels are fabulously gorgeous women who are as brilliant as they are beautiful, and who can kick-box five guys at a time: Dylan (co-producer Drew Barrymore), Alex (Lucy Liu), and Natalie (Cameron Diaz). They are so technologically adept that they can tug a few wires and make a fast food drive-through speaker sound like an MP3 track. They'll stop in the middle of tracking a suspect to give each other flirting pointers -- and stop in the middle of a life-or-death kickboxing fight to take a phone call from a boyfriend. Charlie's latest client is a software firm whose programming genius, Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell), has been kidnapped. His voice identification program, if combined with global positioning technology, could be used to track anyone, even Charlie. So the Angels are off to the rescue.

Charlie's Angels manages to fulfill the middle-school-age fantasies of both boys and girls and to make it clear that it doesn't take itself too seriously. The result is a lot of silly popcorn fun. This is the kind of movie in which the action sequences may be sped up, but the heroines' hair is always in slow motion, a sort of Josie and the Pussycats crossed with Mission: Impossible. The Angels go undercover as belly dancers, a race car pit crew, corporate consultants, and lederhosen-clad messengers. It also involves placing the Angels in jeopardy every 17 minutes or so. But these Angels don't use guns. They take on bad guys with their wits and their feet.

The Angels have so much fun that it's impossible not to enjoy them. The fight scenes were staged by the same person who did The Matrix, and the Angels get a huge charge out of their suspended-air kicks and chops. A soundtrack of cheesy 1970s music ("Brandy," "You Make Me Feel Like Dancin'," "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel") and sly digs like an airline passenger disgusted by the prospect of watching T.J. Hooker: The Movie keep things lighthearted. The Angels are all terrific, especially Diaz, whose pure pleasure in doing horrible retro disco dances lights up an entire room. Bill Murray has some good moments as their sidekick, Bosley.