Movie review by Greg Carlson

Woody Allen is so reliably prolific as a writer-director of New York City-based tales of cosmic humiliations and bittersweet relationships, seeing one of his films is often like pulling on a comfortable, well-worn sweater. Even when his newer work fails to live up to the spectacular golden age that delivered pictures like “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,” it is still a bracing antidote to much of the poison being sold as caviar in the current cinema. The old, dependable formula is in full-swing in “Anything Else,” a funny riff on Woody’s regular obsessions with difficult girlfriends, anti-Semitism, and occupational failure.

Jason Biggs is in fine form as Jerry Falk (the role Woody would have played had the movie been made some time ago), a young comedy writer represented by a struggling, past-his-prime agent (Danny DeVito, in a small, but wonderfully comic part). Jerry is mentored and guided by fellow writer David Dobel (Allen), a neurotic conspiracy theorist hell-bent on assembling the perfect survival kit for the inevitable Armageddon. Dobel dispenses misguided life-advice to Jerry on a daily basis, often summarizing his personal philosophy through antique vaudeville one-liners and other ancient witticisms. Meanwhile, Jerry is tied up in knots over Amanda (Christina Ricci), a dangerous man-magnet and all-around reckless, free-spirited flake.

Despite the obvious hazard of making Amanda a nightmarish femme fatale, Allen sidesteps the potential charges of misogyny by allowing Ricci to craft a sly and subtle performance that propels the film forward. Sure, Amanda is an obvious liar and cheat, but she is also forthcoming about many of her eyebrow-raising lifestyle choices. There is also the little matter of how Jerry hooked up with her in the first place – via an illicit affair begun while both parties were involved with significant others. In other words, Allen makes it abundantly clear that Jerry is responsible for the generous servings of misery he chokes down after getting involved with Amanda.

Like many of Allen’s character-driven movies, “Anything Else” plays as a series of comic vignettes dependent upon the chemistry of the actors. Individual scenes draw solid laughs, including the sight of Allen’s Dobel weakly trying to smash out the windows of a car following a chastening at the hands of a pair of thuggish louts, a sidewalk exchange in which Jerry’s plans for a fancy anniversary dinner are spoiled when Amanda informs him she has already eaten, and the tour de force spectacle of DeVito’s character having a disruptive meltdown in a nice restaurant.

Even as he ages, Woody Allen enlists extremely talented directors of photography in order to keep himself, his actors, and his beloved Manhattan looking as attractive as possible. Cinematographer Darius Khondji (adding his name to a long list of venerable DPs to shoot for Allen) practically makes his locations glow from within, and the many scenes set in Central Park are gorgeous. Ricci and Biggs have also never looked better on film than they do here. Nobody is going to argue that Allen or DeVito are in line to win any beauty contests, but co-star Stockard Channing (taking an uncharacteristically flimsy role) also receives the Khondji touch.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

For those who love the con-artist genre, it is difficult to take in any new stories without the cautious, attentive, knowledge that at some point, the old switcheroo is going to pulled on the audience as well as on the characters in the narrative.  Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Men,” adapted from the novel by Eric Garcia, is no exception to this rule, but the richness and depth of the primary performances softens a great deal of the typical frustration one feels as a victim of the “Jamaican Switch.”

Nicolas Cage, as an artful dodger with a satchel full of neurotic tics, twitches, and nervous mannerisms, is the center of the movie’s universe.  His Roy Waller belongs in the pantheon of over-the-top screen depictions of fanciful phobics.  Stuttering, blinking, and hiccupping his way through a sensational performance on par with his very best work, Cage’s turn might occasionally remind you of his Academy Award-winning role as self-destructive alcoholic Ben Sanderson in “Leaving Las Vegas,” or his recent double-duty as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in “Adaptation.”  This sort of stuff is what Cage does best – he’s the Miles Davis of the mentally maladjusted.

Stars are only as good as the actors with whom they are surrounded, and Cage is aided and abetted by Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman.  Rockwell equals the insouciant, oily charm of his Chuck Barris impersonation in “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” as Roy’s partner-in-crime, Frank Mercer.  Frank is as loose and slovenly as Roy is clenched and meticulous – he’s the kind of guy who scarfs down cheeseburgers over Roy’s perfectly manicured carpet even when he knows the crumbs drive his pal to distraction.  Lohman is, without second thought, the film’s not-so-secret weapon.  A 23-year-old playing a 14-year-old (the actress turns 24 on September 18) Lohman is dazzling as Angela, Roy’s long-lost daughter, and steals every scene in which she appears.

Ridley Scott, clearly taking a much needed break from the overbearing bombast of flicks like “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down,” shrewdly steps back and lets his actors have at it.  With players as good as these, it is a delight to just watch them strut their stuff, but Scott also understands pacing, rhythm, design, and the value of parallel storylines.  The “big con” that Frank and Roy are pulling on a mark named Frechette (inhabited by on-the-button Bruce McGill) supposedly drives the story, but the scenes in which Roy bonds with Angela are a sublime cut above.  Once Roy begins to teach Angela the tricks of his trade (she is, of course, a natural born grifter), the movie takes flight and manages to soar for nearly the majority of its remaining running time.

“Matchstick Men” is not quite perfect, however, in that the screenplay (by Nicholas Griffin and Ted Griffin) violates its own elaborate premise on a few occasions, unscrupulously – and some would argue unfairly – scamming the viewer after the manner of its protagonists.  The tired and overused “One Year Later” coda is trotted out with some ambivalence, and the final result leaves a decidedly curious aftertaste.  Despite these minor flaws, “Matchstick Men” shimmers and sparkles like the water in Roy’s well maintained but never utilized backyard pool.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Brian Helgeland cannot be faulted for trying to expand his repertoire with “The Order,” despite the fact that the movie is a complete dud.  Following up the occasionally clever “A Knight’s Tale” (which also starred Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, and Mark Addy) with a contemporary spin on ecclesiastical arcana is not the sort of choice many filmmakers would make.  Barring “The Exorcist,” the religious thriller has not fared too well, and unfortunately, “The Order” must be added to the pile of failures.

Ledger plays Alex, a young, devastatingly handsome NYC-based priest-cum-detective who flies to Rome to investigate the mysterious death of his old mentor.  Apparently because it would be boring not to have a love interest and a sidekick, Alex brings along Mara (Sossamon), a recent mental hospital escapee who shares a convoluted history with him, and Thomas (Addy), another renegade cleric from Alex’s order who happens to fancy large doses of booze and profanity.  Once in Italy, the trio crosses paths with Eden (Benno Furmann, who apparently replaced Vincent Cassel when the latter dropped out of the film over “creative differences” with Helgeland), a wealthy gadabout who claims to be a “Sin Eater.”

Sin Eaters, we learn, operate outside the boundaries of Catholic doctrine – they perform a ceremony in which a dying person can gain entrance into the kingdom of heaven without the blessing or forgiveness of the church.  This supernatural shortcut is accompanied in the movie with some seriously awful CG special effects: at the climax of the odd rite, vaporous tendrils resembling calamari undulate toward the Sin Eater’s mouth, causing visible distress and discomfort to Eden as he grants each expiring sinner safe passage to paradise.  Something like the grim reaper, Eden has been steadily employed as the last of the Sin Eaters for centuries, and is now ready to pass the torch to – who else? – Alex.

While the basic premise of “The Order” offers a potentially intriguing spin on the worn-out tropes of the theological horror movie, Helgeland muddies up the works with a goofy “Eyes Wide Shut”-wannabe subplot involving a creepy underground society of sinister clergy – kind of like a “respected cardinal by day,” “weird, masked, dungeon-dwelling, sex-deviant executioner by night” sort of thing.  Even the presence of skeletal Peter Weller, intoning dialogue in his most ominous voice, fails to resuscitate the cobwebby storyline.

Ledger, a good actor with good instincts, wanders around looking lost and unsure of himself for most of the movie.  Worse yet, the talented Sossamon is hamstrung with a criminally underwritten role.  Helgeland allows her to disappear for large blocks of time, and never satisfactorily establishes the weight of the forbidden sexual attraction between Mara and Alex that is so thematically critical to the plot.  Instead, Mara spends her time wandering around in silk pajamas, brushing her teeth and nonsensically explaining why she paints pictures of sunflowers.  Addy’s Thomas seems to be the only character in the movie that sees through the metaphysical smokescreen, but his entreaties to Alex are always too little, too late.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Victor Salva attempts to establish a horror franchise with the release of “Jeepers Creepers 2,” an uninspired sequel to the clever, well-directed 2001 original. It is certainly too bad that this new installment of the story fails to reach beyond the standard “group of teenagers get picked off one by one” formula, because the design of the creature and its attendant mythology are conceptually top-flight. Adding a few flourishes to the details that made the Creeper so compelling in the first film, Salva doesn’t go nearly as far as he did before in making the terror resonate with psychological intensity.

A supernatural humanoid with gigantic bat wings, razor teeth, and clawed feet, the Creeper inspires additional fright by occasionally appearing as a scarecrow – complete with old, raggedy clothes and beat-up hat. We learn that the monster only awakens from a kind of hibernation once every twenty-three years, and only then for twenty-three days before it shuts down its body clock. Those twenty-three days, however, are going to be seriously unpleasant for the hapless people selected by the Creeper as breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.

“Jeepers Creepers 2” mostly does things one at a time, but at least initially, two different stories begin to unfold. In the first, salt-of-the-earth farmer Jack Taggart (the always intriguing Ray Wise) loses his youngest son to the Creeper in broad daylight. Fueled by a desire to seek revenge, Taggart and his surviving son set out to track and kill the Creeper. Meanwhile, a small high school basketball team has won the state championship and is heading for home when a flat tire hamstrings their celebratory road trip. A weird bone-and-claw throwing star turns out to be the source of the blowout, and it isn’t too long before the marauding Creeper begins to prey on the sitting ducks.

Salva obviously studied “Jaws” while preparing his movie, and the modus operandi of Taggart echoes the single-minded obsession of Robert Shaw’s Quint – even down to the specially modified tools employed in order to bring down the beast. Taggart’s weapon of choice is a nasty harpoon: a pickup truck-mounted fencepost hole puncher, tricked out with hand-forged skewers attached to strong cable. It’s a good thing someone has prepared to do battle with the Creeper, because the kids on the bus aren’t particularly resourceful.

Weaving in an odd subplot dealing with racial tensions on the basketball team (which never really goes anywhere), the high-schoolers are crudely sketched. There is a bitter, racist, homophobe, a bookish equipment manager with oversized glasses, a cute cheerleader who has unexplained visions in which she comes to understand the Creeper’s ghastly motivations, and a budding journalist pegged as gay by his insensitive classmates. Salva misses the boat by not investing any time in the development of these characters, and the audience is left with broad types instead of three-dimensional people. By the time the credits roll, it is painfully apparent (despite an appealing flash-forward coda) that no new lessons have been learned – which is not a good sign for the unlucky ones who will be around the next time the Creeper takes flight.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The original “American Pie” worked because it was genuinely clever and inventive, despite its reputation for outrageous, gross-out gags. The large ensemble interacted like a group of people who really knew one another, and even though the primary plot revolved around male buddies vowing to have sex with their girlfriends by prom time, the females weren’t just left on the sidelines with nothing to do – in some cases they turned out to be far more interesting than the boys vying for their attention.

By the time the inevitable sequel strolled into theatres in 2001, practically everything that made the first “American Pie” so enjoyable had been replaced by leaden gags that seemed to go on forever without generating a single chuckle. Somehow, the second film figured it could get by exclusively on the “charm” of accidentally ingested bodily-fluids and painfully embarrassing sexual situations in which the protagonist is humiliated in the most mortifyingly awkward ways imaginable. Character development was an immediate casualty, and protagonist Jim’s relationship with geek flutist Michelle delivered little of the kinky promise alluded to with that quotable phrase “this one time, at band camp…”

So apparently Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) stayed together for the long haul, and decided to tie the knot, but you would hardly know it from the plot of “American Wedding.” While Jim at least hangs around for most of the lame action, poor Michelle practically disappears from the movie altogether. What a shame. Hannigan is at least as gifted as Seann William Scott. But one supposes that because Stifler turned out to be the “breakout” character of the series, the filmmakers just figured they would build the entire story around him. This is a major miscalculation, and it torpedoes “American Wedding” swiftly.

Scott’s portrayal of Stifler was one of the funniest things about the original “American Pie,” but he has certainly worn out his welcome. A funny thing happened between 1999 and 2003, though, and it shows in every phony giggle and forced profanity that passes Stifler’s lips. Screenwriter Adam Herz appears to have forgotten how to write for his own creations: where once Stifler was immediately identifiable as the archetype of that one guy we all knew in high school, now he is merely a bogus, hollow imitation. That one of the movie’s plot lines revolves around Stifler teaching Jim how to dance doesn’t help matters either.

Director Jesse Dylan phones it in with near-incompetence, even choking on the internal pacing of short scenes. In addition to the criminal underutilization of Alyson Hannigan, Herz’s script also drops the ball on several other important characters. Thomas Ian Nicholas has always been a drip as Kevin, and in “American Wedding” he has finally been relegated to standing around and nodding. It seems like he has no more than half a dozen lines in the entire movie. Eddie Kaye Thomas’ Finch (weirdly, the character who has changed the most from movie to movie) is allowed a bit more to do. The additions of January Jones, Eric Allen Kramer, Deborah Rush, and Fred Willard – who all do good work – cannot save this mess. Perhaps all of the actors can be put to better use in the next “American Pie” movie. Or maybe they will just give Stifler his own starring vehicle.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Summer 2003 proved one strange, inconsequential thing at the box office: movies based on video games almost inevitably suck, while movies based on theme park rides might actually be pretty fun.  In the second “Tomb Raider” entry (its full title, odd punctuation intact, is “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life”) Angelina Jolie reprises her role as the globetrotting thrill-seeker, but the result is as boring and predictable as the first film.  Sadly, the bottom line is clear: it is more fun to play “Tomb Raider” on your computer than it is to watch it on the silver screen.

Does the plot even matter?  Not really – but when your foggy memory recollects that in the first flick, Croft was chasing after the Illuminati in order to prevent the controlling of time itself, the notion of tracking down Pandora’s Box does not seem any more unreasonable.  After all, the sequel’s opening set-piece – an underwater treasure hunt in a temple erected by Alexander the Great – ends with our heroine cutting her own arm in order to attract a nasty-looking shark, which she then punches in the snout and rides to the water’s surface.  Reality itself is relative in Lara’s world.

Ripping off iconic adventurers like Indiana Jones and Allan Quatermain (who rather unfortunately turned up recently in the slumberous adaptation of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”) does not seem that difficult – especially when employing someone as stunning and unusual as Jolie in the lead – but “The Cradle of Life” makes a perfect mess of it.  Screenwriter Dean Georgaris elects to do nothing that might elevate his script above the lifeless sludge that preceded it, and as a result, Lara herself remains as brittle, aloof, and unknowable as she did the first time around.

Not even director Jan De Bont, taking the reins from Simon “Con Air” West, can jumpstart the lumbering, two-hour affair.  Sure, the movie teems with action scenes, but each one feels as though it was written, performed, photographed, and edited in extreme slow motion.  Lara Croft visits Greece, Asia, and Africa, but the gorgeous scenery remains utilized only as travelogue eye candy and never as a vibrant geography that demands to be treated as if it were integral to the plot or as important as the characters.  Predictably, the regional ethnicities, from an “adorable” family on a sampan/houseboat to Djimon Hounsu’s stoic warrior, are treated with old-fashioned, colonial condescension.

Jolie, whose ravishing physicality makes her the ideal human being to play a computer-generated superhero, has built a solid reputation for playing unpredictable, edgy mavericks and should therefore be able to harness Croft’s inherent appeal (the intelligence, the purposefulness, the independence, the resiliency, etc.).  Somehow, the rich and beautiful daredevil continues to elude the actor, despite her dedicated efforts.  Jolie should not be blamed, however, for the sad fact that the “Tomb Raider” movies are anything but entertaining.  The trick lies inside the rambling narratives of the video games, and more to the point, how to turn those escapades into compelling big screen tales.  Maybe next time.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A stomach-turning quagmire of wretched excess and capitalist notions of wealthy America’s manifest destiny, “Bad Boys II” is one of the most shockingly horrid movies released in recent memory. It’s not quite “Bloodsucking Freaks” with a budget, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay demonstrate again and again that what they possess in the way of chase-scene finesse, they sorely lack in taste. So idiotic is this name-only sequel, audience members will wonder aloud whether Will Smith and Martin Lawrence even bothered to read the screenplay before accepting their handsome salaries.

Set in a fantasy-land version of Miami, where Henry Rollins can pass for the head of the police department’s Tactical Narcotics Team and large scale Ku Klux Klan rallies front drug smuggling operations, “Bad Boys II” plays like an abject TV cop show – sort of a “Miami Vice” from a parallel universe where the writing is no good. Bay’s visuals betray his fascination for “Vice’s” Michael Mann, but he uses a sledgehammer instead of Mann’s scalpel, and the results are boorish, ugly, and simple-minded. Imagine the movie without the charisma of its two appealing leads, and its inherent cruelty would be unbearable.

At roughly 145 minutes, “Bad Boys II” never meets an action sequence it doesn’t like, going so far as to nearly dispense with plot entirely. What little story that does exist concerns the two-man wrecking crew of Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett (the tightly-wound family man) and Smith’s Mike Lowrey (the smooth-talking ladykiller) as they pursue a ruthless Cuban drug kingpin (embarrassingly inhabited by Jordi Molla as a Summer Stock version of Al Pacino’s “Scarface” mobster). Add to the mix NYC-based DEA agent Gabrielle Union (looking completely disoriented) as Marcus’ little sister, a half-dozen plot holes and coincidences, and some flashy sports cars and large explosions, and you’ve got what passes for entertainment these days.

Bruckheimer also produced “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and minus a couple of spectacular shots of things blowing up, the two films could not be any less alike. “Bad Boys II” respects neither the conventions of action movie protocol – its “heroes” are extravagantly self-centered and egomaniacal – nor its audience. One ghastly set-piece, offensive on a variety of levels, sees a van loaded with corpses carom around the streets, spilling bodies on the pavement. Some of the cadavers are then run over by pursuing vehicles, and the head of one unfortunate dead body pops off while Lawrence stifles his urge to vomit. This is supposed to be humorous.

In another scene, the bad boys badger a teenager who has come to take Marcus’ daughter on a date. At the door, Mike pretends to be a drunk ex-con, and threatens the poor kid with sodomy. This is also apparently intended for laughs. Or consider the stunt that sends a canary-yellow Hummer bouncing through a Cuban hillside shantytown, shredding the hardscrabble shacks that are homes to hundreds of people too poor to even attend a movie. The composition unintentionally renders an apocalyptic vision of America’s whip hand crushing any weaker society that doesn’t appreciate late-model SUVs – and the sight is as repugnant as the rest of the movie.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Since its debut all the way back on March 18, 1967, Walt Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” dark ride has delighted literally millions of children and adults alike.  With its gorgeous dioramas and elaborate special effects, “Pirates” is arguably the signature attraction of the theme park.  Some may claim that its (then-groundbreaking) audio-animatronic figures haven’t dated terribly well, but visit Anaheim any given summer day, and take a look at the smiling faces of the folks stepping off the ride – dead men may tell no tales, but “Pirates of the Caribbean” is an American classic.

While the idea of making a movie based on a theme park ride is certainly novel, the Gore Verbinski-directed, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” struggles to live up to the entertainment that inspired it.  The movie version is noisy, sprawling, and cannot make up its mind how many climaxes it needs.  At more than two hours long, it quite simply cannot do what Disneyland accomplishes in a matter of minutes.  That said, “Pirates” still manages many delights, not the least of which is a fabulous performance from Johnny Depp.

Playing Captain Jack Sparrow as a flouncing, out-of-his-mind oddball decked out with colorful beads in his half-dreadlocks and mascara dripping from his eyes, Depp clearly relishes his role.  The actor might have described his approach to Sparrow as a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe LePew, but the heady stew he conjures up is something altogether original in the annals of cinematic pirates.  Captain Jack operates with a roguish insouciance that always keeps you guessing as to where his true allegiance lies.  He’s a natural born scoundrel and liar, and he has so much fun, you cheer him on even when it appears he is up to no good.

The other actors can barely keep up with Depp, but they all serve their purposes nicely.  Knockout Keira Knightley (herself something like a cross between Natalie Portman and Winona Ryder) is at the center of the plot as the imperiled Elizabeth Swann, a governor’s daughter destined from childhood to be mixed up with buccaneers.  Elizabeth’s love interest, a self-conscious blacksmith with his own ties to piracy, is played by Orlando Bloom.  Rounding out the group is scenery-glutton Geoffrey Rush as the evil Captain Barbossa, the cursed mutineer who kidnaps Elizabeth because he believes her to be the key that will untangle him from his fate.

Unfortunately, far too much time is spent away from the main characters, dwelling instead on the less-interesting scalawags in the supporting cast.  While it certainly is cool to see the special effects wizardry that turns the Black Pearl crew into undead skeletons (it happens whenever the moonlight shines upon them), the filmmakers should have paid more attention to Elizabeth.  Overall, though, “Pirates of the Caribbean” seems likely to break another major curse by becoming the first successful pirate movie in a very long time.  Virtually every effort released in the last couple of decades has been a complete failure (i.e. “The Pirate Movie” and “Cutthroat Island”), but this Disney version might earn itself a rousing chorus of “Yo Ho! Yo Ho!  A pirate’s life for me!”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

For a relatively outmoded, 55-year-old action hero whose best work took place what seemed like ages ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger does his thing just like that other unstoppable mechanized force, the Energizer Bunny.  He keeps on coming, with a relentlessness that somehow transforms audience boredom into something resembling admiration, if not respect.  While the same certainly cannot be said for the wooden thespian’s “call to serve” as a potential gubernatorial candidate in sunny California, seeing the impassive hulk in his Terminator leathers conjures a weirdly comforting nostalgia.  It’s hard to believe the franchise was born nearly two decades ago, when Ronald Reagan inhabited the White House.

While James Cameron shrewdly morphed the bad Terminator into a good one for 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” the basic personality of the killer cyborg has remained intact all the way through the latest installment (and if “Rise of the Machines” is as monstrous a hit as the previous outing, there is little doubt we will be visited at least once more by the metallic juggernaut).  By now, of course, the Terminator is as ensconced in our popular culture as Frankenstein’s monster, with catchphrases like “Hasta la vista, baby,” and “I’ll be back” fused in the brains of millions.

Cameron is not behind the camera for “T3,” but director Jonathan Mostow, who showed much promise in his effectively-staged action sequences in “U-571” and “Breakdown” proves a solid choice to take the reins.  Fans will undoubtedly argue which of the three Terminator movies is their favorite, and that is a credit to Mostow – for merely holding his own in a world previously dominated by legendary control-freak Cameron.  “T3” is not without deep flaws, however, even if many are the result of things beyond the new director’s control.

First of all, the absence of Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong resonates deeply.  Replacing the reportedly troubled Furlong, Nick Stahl struggles to match the brooding intensity of future leader John Connor, but never equals the kind of haunting, cornered-animal quality that was the signature of his predecessor.  The same goes for Claire Danes, who plays veterinarian Kate Brewster.  Granted, it is unfair to compare her bewildered, out-of-the-loop character with Hamilton’s commanding powerhouse, but there is little doubt that she just doesn’t quite discharge automatic weapons with the same verve as Sarah Connor.

Plots of time-travel movies, especially ones that are populated by wicked human-like androids hell-bent on assassination, are generally unwise to scrutinize too closely.  Suffice it to say that once again, everything boils down to machine versus humankind, with John Connor the fated survivor who must take on the self-aware computer system that threatens anything consisting of blood and bones.  And that’s where “T3” delivers its payload.  As the TX, or Terminatrix, icy Kristanna Loken one-ups the hair-raising potency of Robert Patrick’s T1000 (even though she does not employ exactly the same kind of cool, liquid metal visual effects).  Loken is not nearly as good an actor as Patrick, but the filmmakers try to make up for it by giving the robo-babe a morphing, bionic arm that, among other things, doubles as a flamethrower.  One look at the TX, and you know that Arnold’s “obsolete design” T101 will have his work cut out for him.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,” measured against the majority of its summer box office competition, peels out, tires spinning, to take a commanding lead over stiff and stilted killjoys like “Hulk,” “2 Fast 2 Furious,” and “Bruce Almighty,” in the category that counts: big dumb fun. Director McG returns (along with celestial Cameron Diaz, lush Lucy Liu, and darling Drew Barrymore) to do what he does better than the rest – serve up a mind-boggling confection that borders on sensory overload, and make it all look breathlessly easy. McG, whose background as a music video and commercial helmer is a major asset, always keeps an ace up his sleeve: an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, ready to be quoted at the drop of a phonograph needle.

Like the first “Charlie’s Angels” movie, the sequel is packed with perfectly-selected pop songs that cover the action like a kind of sonic wallpaper. Ditto the director’s fondness for movie references, which crop up so often it is easy to lose track of just how many are squeezed in (best one: the nod to “Singin’ in the Rain” via a zealous fan at a big movie premiere). Sure, all the finely-tuned style doesn’t leave much room for anything resembling a developed plot, but who cares? Operating like one giant-sized, big-gulp of a music video itself, the story can only serve as an excuse to set up one dazzling action set-piece or spectacular costume change after another.

If “Full Throttle” falls short of the original, it does so on two counts: first, by aping so much of what had been presented in the first movie, and second, by spreading out the screen time among too many diversions. The second criticism is typical of action-comedy or comic book-type sequels (just think of how the Batman franchise finally collapsed under the weight of too many new characters and villains). This time, we have a new Bosley (Bernie Mac, quite serviceable as a replacement for droll Bill Murray), a fallen angel in the form of Demi Moore (whose much-ballyhooed return to the screen amounts to no great shakes), and a round robin of subplots and scenes for the central trio and their boyfriends (Matt LeBlanc and Luke Wilson both return). Even Crispin Glover reprises his role as The Thin Man. Add to that cameos by Bruce Willis, John Cleese, Jaclyn Smith, Pink, and heck, even the Olsen Twins, and you’ve got a few balls to juggle.

The heart and soul of “Charlie’s Angels,” however, remains the relationship of the titular trio, and producer-star Barrymore can be credited with building a team that feels and acts like a family. As preposterous as it seems, the age-old themes of taking care of each other and looking out for your loved ones bubble up through the otherwise glib winks and nudges. These best friends may bond while dressed as nuns or strippers, but their loyalty to each other transcends their wardrobe, no matter how impressive. Teamwork is merely reinforced by color-coordinated get-ups, from neon moto-cross garb to welders’ outfits, and Natalie, Alex, and Dylan have got the looks that kill.