Charlie’s Angels

In a post-cred­its sequence fea­tur­ing some inex­plic­a­ble cameo appear­ances, includ­ing teen snow­board­ing sen­sa­tion Chloe Kim, we learn that Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg was at one time a Charlie’s Angel. It’s a telling ref­er­ence, nod­ding to a spe­cif­ic yet wide­spread strain of entry-lev­el fem­i­nism that focus­es on idols over ideas and sur­faces over what lies beneath them.

This well-intend­ed, ulti­mate­ly uncon­vinc­ing school of pro­gres­sive thought – the mind­set that embla­zons upbeat slo­ga­neer­ing on t‑shirts that then go for 20 pounds a pop – informs the umpteenth take on the fran­chise about foxy, lethal female spies. This time around, the Angels are lean­ing in, so much so that the film tips over.

Direc­tor Eliz­a­beth Banks (pulling dou­ble duty on the oth­er side of the cam­era as the trusty Bosley to a new wave of go-get­ter Angels) came to this project with a clear agen­da of empow­er­ment, an agree­able instinct put into prac­tice in super­fi­cial and mean­ing­less ways. We’re first acquaint­ed with oper­a­tives Sabi­na (Kris­ten Stew­art) and Jane (Ella Balin­s­ka), each of them role mod­els to the lit­tle girls that keep sig­nif­i­cant­ly crop­ping up all over the film.

They’re strong, con­fi­dent, beau­ti­ful, and their per­fec­tion even extends to their non-flaw flaws: Sabi­na comes from mon­ey, which is appar­ent­ly a cross to bear, and Jane has trou­ble ​“let­ting peo­ple in”. Nei­ther of these are real com­pli­ca­tions of char­ac­ter, in the same respect that the aspi­ra­tional fan­ta­sy of self-actu­al­i­sa­tion that they sell is not a real vision of thriv­ing womanhood.

The third mem­ber of their #squad is every­gal Ele­na, a sys­tems engi­neer and the lat­est con­tri­bu­tion to a recent trend of gen­der-par­i­ty-in-STEM-fields sub­text. Her deci­sion to blow the whis­tle on a poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic defect in a vague Alexa-type doohick­ey man­u­fac­tured by her tech whiz boss (Sam Claflin) gets her embroiled in the Angels’ lat­est glo­be­trot­ting adven­ture, a predica­ment to which she adapts with shock­ing quickness.

Fleet­ing­ly men­tioned krav maga train­ing enables her to dis­able an oppo­nent twice her size in hand-to-hand com­bat, most­ly because she believes in her­self, and she can hack com­put­ers with the best of them. (She even does the hack­er thing, and says ​“I’m in” once she’s in.)

Her pres­ence in the film com­mu­ni­cates that any­one can be an Angel, indeed, that there’s an Angel in every woman already, wait­ing to be unleashed if only they can find their inner god­dess or some such. The path she takes to her best self has no mid­dle or stops along the way; a cou­ple scenes elapse, and she’s sud­den­ly a badass queen and whol­ly unrecog­nis­able as a human person.

The ample plea­sures of Stewart’s per­for­mance ought not to be down­played, as she game­ly takes on the roles of class cut-up as well as paper doll on which the cos­tume design­ers can play dress-up. (Her gym shorts and French maid ensem­bles will trig­ger a generation’s worth of sex­u­al awak­en­ings for all genders.)

For an actress so well-trained in restraint and sub­tle­ty, she’s a real nat­ur­al when it comes to deliv­er­ing a laugh line, or just liven­ing up a bit of busi­ness with some wild-card phys­i­cal­i­ty. Though the sto­ry doesn’t frame it as such, she becomes the main char­ac­ter by virtue of being the production’s most famous name, and then earns it by being the most mag­net­ic presence.

But she’s strand­ed in a film lack­ing the spik­i­ness that makes her turn so divert­ing and her take on lib­er­at­ed not-giv­ing-a-shit the clos­est to believ­abil­i­ty. Any enjoy­ment comes with a twinge of dis­ap­point­ment, as the flim­sy pol­i­tics under­cut the com­mend­able inten­tions behind them. As a direc­tor and pro­duc­er, the space that Banks occu­pies in the indus­try leaves a sim­i­lar­ly con­flict­ed impression.

If we’ve got to have mediocre stu­dio block­busters, might as well bring a lit­tle diver­si­ty to the ros­ter of peo­ple mak­ing them. But we’d all be much bet­ter off if fem­i­nism just got a new tal­ent agent and start­ed tak­ing more wor­thy jobs.