Charlie’s Angels (2019)
(Amazon Streaming, December 2020) No. Just no. I’ve had it with misandry promoted as female empowerment. True equality is not a film in which all men are portrayed as evil, duplicitous or incompetent. This Charlie’s Angels’ self-satisfied assertion that this is, like, the first time anyone has even thought about having female action heroes is immensely grating, and the script goes out of its way to be actively unpleasant in matters of male-bashing. The thing is, I don’t actually hate the entire thing: Despite some fun-killing wrong notes, writer-director-star-producer Elizabeth Banks (who deservedly earns every good and bad comment about the film) can direct a few good sequences even if her writing is repetitive and bland. Ella Balinska is a joy to watch, and Kristen Stewart is surprisingly compelling here. With a few tweaks to tone down the stridently misandrist tone (and a few more viewings of McG’s previous Charlie’s Angels films to understand why they were actually fun), this could have been much better. And if all of this makes me a reactionary… so be it. But I have a feeling that this is going to age badly enough that everyone, male or female or other, is going to see this Charlie’s Angels in twenty years and roll their eyes. That is, if anyone remembers it.