Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) |
|
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) |
|
|
| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Action |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-McG's Telestrator Commentary Audio Commentary-Writers Informational Subtitles-Angel Vision Trivia Track Featurette-Pussy Cat Dolls Featurette-Rolling With The Punches Featurette-XXX-Treme Angels Featurette-Full Throttle Featurette-Cameo-Graphy Music Highlights-Full Throttle Jukebox Music Video-Pink Featuring William Orbit - "Feel Good Time" Filmographies-Cast & Crew Trailer-Anger Management, S.W.A.T. Trailer-Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines Featurette-Designing Angels Featurette-There's no such thing as a short shot, only an overworked pr Featurette-Angel's Makeover: Hansen Dam Featurette-Dream Duds |
|
| Rating |
|
||
| Year Of Production | 2003 | ||
| Running Time | 102:43 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (67:58) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4,5 | Directed By | McG |
|
Studio
Distributor |
 Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Cameron Diaz Drew Barrymore Lucy Liu Bernie Mac Crispin Glover Justin Theroux Robert Patrick Demi Moore |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | Edward Shearmur |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
|
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.40:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
||
| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English Italian Italian Audio Commentary Dutch Dutch Audio Commentary Arabic Bulgarian Danish Finnish Hebrew Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish English Information |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, Outtakes + car wash scene | ||
Charlie's Angels was a good fun movie, arguably one of the most successful attempts at bringing a 70s TV series to the big screen. It was a good blend of comedy, action, and a thread of story, and had a finely judged sense of not taking itself too seriously. Its success guaranteed that there would be a sequel, but could the sequel be as good?
The sequel is not called Charlie's Angels 2, which is a surprise, and a pleasure a touch of originality. Nope, it's called Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, and that's an appropriate name, because the movie starts during the opening Columbia logo (just like the previous one), and roars off at full speed, with barely a pause for the next hundred-odd minutes.
What's the same as the first movie? Well, the Angels are still Natalie (Cameron Diaz), Alex (Lucy Liu), and Dylan (Drew Barrymore), all of whom are still gorgeous. Charlie is still represented by that silly little box on the desk (and still voiced by John Forsythe, the voice from the TV series). Also back are bad guy The Thin Man (Crispin Glover), and boyfriends Pete (Luke Wilson) and Jason (Matt LeBlanc). Tom Green is not back (and I'm glad!). This one, like the original, is directed by McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol).
What's different from the first movie? Well, most obvious is that we have a different Bosley (Bernie Mac), but this change works better than I expected. We get new villains (I'm not saying who), new clients, new jokes, new stunts, and a new office (the old one blew up, remember?).
This film is like some of the later James Bond films, and quite a few recent action films. The plot is not a huge part of the film, being more a reason to move our heroines from one action set-piece to the next (and there are plenty of these). That's not to say there isn't a plot there is one, it's just not very important (although it does have some excellent twists. In fact, it's so unimportant, I'm not going to bother telling you what it is. Remember that stunt where Bond skydived his way into a plane to escape? This film goes a couple of steps beyond that, and that's only in its opening scene...
There are a lot of cameo appearances, including one by Bruce Willis which is funnier the second time around ((SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) when you know that he is being attacked by Demi Moore...). The cameo by Jaclyn Smith, the longest-serving of the original Angels, is quite sweet. Some of the others include Carrie Fisher, the Olsen twins, Pink (the singer), Bela Karolyi (the gymnastics coach) and Ja'net DuBois (from Good Times). John Cleese gets more than a cameo, playing Alex's father.
There are homages (or gentle send-ups) of a stack of movies. One of the most contemporary is a gentle send-up of the TV series CSI. These start with the opening scene, which is reminiscent of the scene with Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then we get Urban Cowboy, Mission Impossible 2 (sent up as Maximum Extreme 2), Bring It On, Grease, Cape Fear (the Scorsese remake), Blues Brothers, Sound of Music, Flashdance, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and plenty of others... There's a car wash scene in the closing credits that is rather like the one in Josie and the Pussycats.
They must have blown half their budget on music rights, because they have used fragments of a great many songs, to wonderful effect.
There are an astonishing assortment of motor vehicles in this film. They even managed to get their hands on the new Enzo Ferrari before it was revealed to the public (the car went from their set to the Paris motor show for its public debut). They didn't stick to Ferraris (there's one other), but have a wide variety of expensive cars, some current, some classic, including a Shelby Cobra.
There are some excellent fight scenes, with plenty of wire-work (to be expected with Cheung-Yan Yuen doing the fight choreography). The ladies are more credible fighting this time they are fitter and more experienced.
One thing I liked was that the comedy is even better this time. Gotta love some of the moments, like the sprinklers, and the scream near the start of the movie you'll see what I mean. And Lucy Liu gets a chance to be funny this time, which I like.
They've done a superb job of giving each of the ladies equal air time. Cameron Diaz gets her solo dance scene, Lucy Liu gets her father scenes, and Drew Barrymore gets an important part of the plot. Quite equitable.
In summary, if you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one. It's in a similar style, but everything is bigger / brighter / bolder.
This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, 16x9 enhanced. The theatrical aspect ratio is reported as 2.35:1, but could easily have been 2.40:1.
The image is beautifully clear, and quite sharp, throughout. Shadow detail is very good. There is no low-level noise or film grain, except in one brief sequence showing the Hollywood sign at night.
Colour is rendered very well, and there's plenty of colour to see; some of the outfits are black, but there are plenty of bright colours, too. There are no colour-related artefacts.
There are no significant film artefacts and virtually no aliasing. There's the barest hint of occasional moir้. There are no MPEG artefacts.
There are subtitles in twelve languages, but I only watched the English subtitles they are accurate enough (I didn't spot any errors), well-timed, and easy to read.
The disc is single-sided and dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change comes at 67:58, and it is perfect. It comes at a natural pause in the action. Without technical assistance, I don't think I'd have found it.
| Sharpness |  |
| Shadow Detail |  |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
The soundtrack is provided in English, Italian and Polish (an unexpected combination) I only listened to the English. It is Dolby Digital 5.1, at 384 kbps. This is one 5.1 soundtrack that exercises every speaker you own.
The dialogue is clear (almost over-clear) and comprehensible. There are no obvious audio sync problems. When I say over-clear, I mean that a couple of lines have been obviously ADRed, and are too clear for the environment. You have to be more than a bit picky to complain about this, though.
Like the first film, the score is provided by Edward Shearmur. He does a good job, even if an awful lot of scenes don't use his music there are fragments of a great many songs used in the soundtrack.
The surrounds start work within seconds of the start of the film, and get used near-continuously until the end of the film. The subwoofer can't file for unemployment, either there are plenty of explosions to keep it busy, even if it wasn't supporting the bass register (which it does well).
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use | |
| Subwoofer | |
| Overall | |
Few DVDs come close to having this many extras, but most of them are actually interesting!
The menu is animated with music. It's well-themed to the movie.
This is a lot of fun you can feel the energy that he brings to the set as he burbles on about all manner of things to do with the film. He is full of information, and interesting to listen to. This is a worthwhile commentary, and I thoroughly recommend listening to it. There is one question, though; in one scene he claims the Angels are naked. Now I checked that scene frame-by-frame (your reviewer is forced to ridiculous levels of thoroughness in the pursuit of, um, the truth), and I think he's telling a little fib there. Feel free to check for yourselves, and see what you think.
Although the writers don't have McG's energy and enthusiasm, they provide quite an interesting commentary on the evolution of the script for this film. There are some interesting comments about scenes being cut because they would have been prohibitively expensive to stage, and discussions of how the plot developed; characters changed, some were reduced in scope, others eliminated. There was even an explanation that was going to be given for Bill Murray's absence, but in the end they decided it was unnecessary.
This is neat. When enabled, little boxes pop up-on screen providing various pieces of trivia about something on screen. There are a few short pieces in "White Rabbit" style: when a speaker box appears on-screen you can press Enter to view a short piece (typically about a minute long) about a particular location this is a cute extra feature.
This is a short piece on the burlesque act called The Pussycat Dolls. Apparently they are rather well known, and have had a number of celebrity performers join them on occasion, including Christina Applegate and Carmen Electra. Includes some rehearsal footage with the Angels.
An almost required piece now, explaining how the actors performed a great many of their own stunts, and all their own fighting. Still quite interesting, especially because it gives us the chance to see how some of the scenes were created.
Sounds really suggestive, doesn't it? And it's only included on the "unrated" version in Region 1... Well, don't get too excited it is not what you might think. This is about the Coal Bowl sequence involving motorbikes and motocross. Quite interesting, particularly when they show the riders practicing the stunts (those jumps are real, not CG, not green screen). One of the riders (they gathered some of the best motocross and freestyle bike riders) makes mention of the Angels being like Shaolin Ninjas (hmm - must be a sect of Shaolin monks I haven't previously heard about...).
I was expecting this to be a making-of. It's not. It is a fairly detailed look at the motor vehicles in the movie. Every single vehicle they used is special in some way (except, maybe, the police van in the CSI scene). Really interesting, especially if you're into expensive cars.
A nice piece about production design. There's one comment that stuck in my mind: "Everyone gets a great entrance". An interesting observation, and true, too.
This is an informative, and entertaining, piece about the perils of producing a film like this one. The producer is responsible for keeping everything within budget (and pleading for more money, when required). Well worth watching!
A nice look at how CGI was used to transform a tiny little dam in the US into a monster in Mongolia.
A brief look at the costume designs for this film, including plenty of production sketches of clothes. Quite interesting.
This is kinda cute. They have a page or two of information about each of the featured cameo performers, followed by a grab of film (typically about 15 seconds) in which they appear. The featured performers are:
This is a bit unusual. It lists eleven songs used in the movie (there are others in the movie that aren't listed here, like What A Feeling from Flashdance). Each is introduced by the director and music supervisor, where they describe why they chose this song, then we get a grab from the film where the music is used. The songs are:
A decent video clip for the song that Pink contributed to the movie.
One or two pages for each of:
There are eight Easter eggs scattered through the menus, each leading to a short video clip. All the video clips are titled Angels Film School 101 they are interviews of various members of the crew, with McG doing the interviewing. Interesting viewing, and worth the effort to find them. Do you want a list of where they are?
There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
In Region 1 this film will available in two versions shortly (before the end of October). One is full-screen, and claims "PG-13 rated". The other is wide-screen, and is labelled "Unrated" (bear in mind that rating is voluntary in the US, so releasing an "unrated" disc simply means not submitting it for rating; there's no reason to believe that it couldn't get a PG-13 rating if submitted) the "unrated" version has a few more extras, including one on the Pussycat Doll sequence, one on some of the fighting, and one called XXX-treme Angels (see above to discover what that's really about). There's a claim about "unedited material not seen in theatres", but I suspect that such material is already included on the Region 4 disc.
UPDATE: fascinating now that there are a few reviews of the Region 1 disc we learn that the R4 disc seems to have more extras! Our featurette menu lists eight featurettes (on two pages), theirs has only four (the first four listed above). They get four short featurettes as inserts during the Angel-Vision pop-up trivia track (which means they are a lot harder to access), and three of them sound like they match three of ours; the last one they get is The Cars of Charlie's Angels, a subject already covered in depth in the Full Throttle featurette (which is on both discs). As far as I can tell, they completely miss out on the Designing Angels featurette. Plus we get different inserts in the trivia track: all of ours are short segments about locations (filming at the Playboy mansion, at the Griffith Observatory, and so on) as far as I can tell, the R1 does not include these pieces in any form.
NEW UPDATE: Looks like a few R1 reviewers didn't realise that there was a second page to the Featurettes menu! The R1 does have all the featurettes that are on the R4. However, their Angel-Vision track still links off to the featurettes, while ours links to location pieces that, as far as we can tell, are not on the R1. So we still have more extras...
It sounds like our cut of the film is equivalent to their "unrated" version the extra few seconds described are definitely present. And we appear to have a slightly better transfer.
Looks like the Region 4 disc is the version of choice unless you are desperate for a full-screen version.
A wonderful action-comedy movie that won't tax your brain, but will entertain unreservedly, given an excellent transfer to DVD.
The video quality is excellent.
The audio quality is excellent you'll know why you shelled out good money for your surround system!
The extras are copious, but interesting.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-S733A, using Component output |
| Display | Sony VPH-G70 CRT Projector, QuadScan Elite scaler (Tripler), ScreenTechnics 110. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Denon AVC-A1SE |
| Speakers | Front Left, Centre, Right: Krix Euphonix; Rears: Krix KDX-M; Subwoofer: Krix Seismix 5 |