YMMV / Charlie's Angels (2000)

• Adorkable: Natalie is a complete dork with her terrible dancing and geeky way of doing things. But her Genki Girl persona and her sheer enthusiasm for everything makes her very endearing.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Eric Knox may have learned the truth about his father's death, but was in such denial about it that he believes Charlie had betrayed him.
  • There's also the possibility Eric was not lying and Charlie did betray Eric's father, the guilt over betraying his friend may even be part of the reason he started the Angels in the first place.
• Awesome Music:
  • Eric Knox has some every time he does something evil.
  • Simon Says by Pharoahe Monch is appropriate bad-guy music, considering it's a rap song that samples the Godzilla theme.
  • The Angels fight the Creepy Thin Man to "Smack My Bitch Up" by The Prodigy.
  • Dylan fights a bunch of bad guys to "Song 2" by Blur.
  • And who can forget Destiny's Child's "Independent Woman", which was pretty much the feminist anthem of the early 2000s.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Admit it: You remember the scene with Cameron Diaz dancing in her undies. Or Lucy Liu in black leather. Or Drew Barrymore in the racing suit. And for certain audience members, Lucy Liu giving an ashiatsu.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The random cutaway gag of Bosley making a gun out of soap in his prison cell and then posing as the Miami Vice theme plays. This has no bearing on the rest of the film.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • In the third act, seeing all three of the Angels cut loose and kick all the villains' asses is very satisfying.
  • Knox's death, even though it's also crossed with Alas, Poor Villain and Cry for the Devil.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Thin Man, aka Anthony.
  • The Chad is great... he's great!... The Chad is great... [climbs into the prop funnel of a ship] The Chad... is stuck.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Knowing Bosley of all people ends up the villain in the third movie.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Dylan falls into the house and finds two kids playing Final Fantasy VIII in the first movie. Then, Final Fantasy X-2 would pay tribute to Charlie's Angels in its entirety.
  • Sam Rockwell would later play another villainous scientist, who also has a random signature dance scene.
  • During, the Soul Train scene, Luke Wilson says to a pair of bouncers, "That's old school, right? Old school!" Three years later...
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • The wire-fu action scenes are a big part of the appeal.
  • Alex tends to be a lot of viewers' favourite Angel in this version, making Lucy Liu enough of a reason to watch the movie.
• LGBT Fanbase: Due to its camp tone and focus on three beautiful women in very fashionable outfits, its quite popular with queer viewers, with the Angels being named as many a Closet Key for viewers who watched it growing up.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Eric Knox, born John McGann, is a software designer who incorrectly believes Charles "Charlie" Townsend murdered his father in Vietnam. Seeking revenge, Knox stages both his own kidnapping and the theft of his new voice recognition software and sets up his shady rival Roger Corwin to take the blame. Convincing the Angels that Corwin has bad intentions for the software, Knox gets them to break into the company and hack Corwin's servers. Knox is able to gain access to Corwin's face recognition satellite and use that combined with his voice recognition software to determine Charlie's location thanks to Charlie making a phone call. Knox then heads out in a helicopter and nearly blows Charlie up in his cabin.
  • 2000 film & Full Throttle: The "Creepy Thin Man" is a hitman hired by Knox to help execute his staged kidnapping scheme and framing of Corwin. A skilled fighter, the Thin Man engages the Angels in a fight before then leading them to where they "find" Knox and remains undercover near Corwin while also engaging in and escaping during a race car chase and later killing Corwin on Knox's behalf too. The Thin Man also continues to remain diligent in helping Knox succeed. Escaping death when Knox blows the place up and returning in the next film, the Thin Man pursues and takes out a hitman sent to kill teenaged federal witness Max Petroni who's from the same orphanage as the Thin Man. He then helps the Angels take on mobster Seamus O'Grady and his men in a climactic fight later on.
• Out of the Ghetto: Often held up as an example of how women-led action films can indeed be successful, especially since there is no strong male lead, the most prominent man is the comic relief Bosley, and the love interests are all secondary.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Nintendo GameCube/PS2 game was very poorly received - let JonTron show you why. And if that's not enough to convince you, let the AVGN finish the job.
  • The GameCube version is notorious for having a game breaking bug where you cannot progress past the first level unless you have a memory card inserted!
• Questionable Casting: The villain lineup is rather eclectic: Sam Rockwell as the Big Bad, with Kelly Lynch and Crispin Glover (!) as his martial-arts-using henchmen.
• Retroactive Recognition: Melissa McCarthy appears in the first film; she's the office worker who walks up to Alex while she infiltrates into an office. She also appears in the second film as the woman flirting with Bosley at the crime scene.
• So Bad, It's Good: The overall opinion on both movies, but especially this one. They're certainly very campy and silly, but both movies are so damn unabashedly convinced of their own coolness that it's hard not to have fun along with them.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: These are very campy movies of the So Bad, It's Good appeal. But Lucy Liu delivers a strong, badass performance as the ice queen Alex.
• Tough Act to Follow: Any attempts at reviving the franchise after this incarnation have failed, precisely because this combination of Angels was so popular.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Lucy Liu as a stereotypical German girl (It Makes Sense in Context) looks way, way off with her wig and grin.
• Values Dissonance: At one point, the girls (with the exception of Lucy Liu for obvious reasons) disguise themselves as Asian women, and are later seen in belly dancing outfits with Brownface to boot. Nowadays, that would be recognized as culturally appropriative, but it was seen as acceptable at the time the film came out. What makes it especially ridiculous is that the makeup is unnecessary for the latter, since one can be white and Middle Eastern.
• Values Resonance: The film not only shows women as powerful and intelligent, saving the day on their own, and the third act in fact being all about them saving two men, it also shows Alex laying down clear sexual boundaries such as when she shuts down Corwin's attempts to hit on her while he's under the impression that she's a masseuse, and also rebuffs another man's advances at the party with two firm "no"s.
• Vindicated by History: After the release of the failed 2019 reboot, a lot of people looked back to the original duology with renewed appreciation, noting that, for all of its faults, they were still energetic, fun and daring films, everything the reboot wasn't. Fans lament that there was never a third film with this trio of Angels.

---