Some personal news: I am pleased to announce that after seeing the new Charlie’s Angels, I have finally found a hill to die on. This movie was incredibly fun to watch, and anyone who has anything bad to say about it is just plain WRONG. I loved every single second of its hour and 58 minutes. That is all!
JK, I’m not done gushing about this yet. I enjoyed Charlie’s Angels so much that I kept catching myself smiling like an idiot. It’s funny, it’s filled with incredible looks (it made me want bangs, like, three separate times), and it has a bomb soundtrack. Even the cheesiest moments—like Sabina (Kristen Stewart) making faces at a little girl or the Angels getting sappy over their newly formed friendship—are legitimately delightful. I’m normally borderline cynical, but there was just something about this one that made me consider handing in my grinch card. Even Noah Centineo’s screen time was palatable. Do you know how hard it is to watch Noah flirt without cringing? Director (and writer! and producer! and actor!) Elizabeth Banks really did something here.
I grew up watching action movies (mostly James Bond) with my dad and brothers, and they always spent most of the time losing their minds over the cars, gadgets, and general badassery of it all. I mean, I even went to prom with a guy who intentionally rented a tuxedo identical to Bond’s and wore it around his house for an entire week. I found all that behavior extremely nerdy until this Charlie’s Angels. I just spent an entire morning searching for the animal-print Zadig and Voltaire sweater Sabina wears in the first big fight scene and creeping Elena (Naomi Scott) and Jane (Ella Balinska) on Instagram. Also, “Don’t Call Me Angel” has been stuck in my head since I left the theater. Everything is fine.
If you also loved Charlie’s Angels and are wondering why I’m taking such a defensive stance, you probably haven’t noticed that Twitter is low-key tearing it apart. The grumpiest critics complaining about the existence of a “woke” “feminist” reboot have been thrilled to hear that Charlie’s Angels pulled in only $8.6 million in the opening weekend. But a financial flop doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining. Does getting hardly any Likes on a photo mean your artisanal pizza wasn’t Insta-worthy? No! It does not! It means that the crowds didn’t show up as expected. It happens. (And has happened to a few other reboots recently, like Terminator: Dark Fate and Doctor Sleep.)
The bottom line is that Charlie’s Angels is a good time, and sometimes that’s all you need. Even K-Stew admitted to joining the project because she wanted to do something fun. “The movie is so warm. I’m proud of the way that it makes me feel,” she told Shia LaBeouf in Variety’s Actors on Actors series. And you know what? I’m proud of the way this movie makes me feel too! It’s nice to just kick back and enjoy a silly movie sometimes.
