Say what you will about Hollywood churning out films based on old television series, but Charlie’s Angels might be the best female-led chop-socky action flick to be produced in this country.  Not only is it funny, but Angels’ action sequences are just as good as any blockbuster released this past summer.  And the whole package is covered with a thick layer of cheese, which is a good thing, considering that a film like this should be taken as seriously as a sequel to Battlefield Earth.

For those of you not old enough to remember the television show (I’m one of them), Angels was about three sexy secret agents who worked for the Charles Townsend Detective Agency.  The Angels (and viewers) never saw Charlie, but he assigned their cases via phone calls to an intermediary named Bosley, portrayed here by Bill Murray (Hamlet).  Cases were neatly wrapped up each week, and the pistol-wielding Angels were always sure to find themselves in another precarious predicament in exactly seven days' time.

Here, the pistol-less Angels are played by Cameron Diaz (Any Given Sunday), Drew Barrymore (Never Been Kissed) and Lucy Liu (Shanghai Noon), who play, respectively, the brain, the muscle and the daredevil of the outfit.  They’re a giggly group of girls (think Powerpuff) who, for some reason, are forced to assume secret identities to blend into society.  Angels’ opening credits show clips of each of the character’s childhood before launching into a hysterical montage of all things ‘70s.

The film’s first big action sequence takes place on an airplane, where a character played by LL Cool J (In Too Deep) discovers that a fellow passenger has a bomb on board.  He grabs the terrorist and leaps out of the plane’s emergency exit, plummeting toward the choppy water below. We later learn that the Cool J character is really Dylan (Barrymore) in a latex mask and a voice alteration chip (a la Mission: Impossible). For some strange reason, the film doesn’t address how the petite Barrymore is able to pass for the built Cool J, as if there wasn’t much difference between their body types.

Angels’ story isn’t anything to write home about.  The nerdy creator of cutting-edge voice-recognition software (Sam Rockwell, The Green Mile) has been kidnapped, and his partner (Kelly Lynch, Mr. Magoo) seems to think that a maniacal satellite tycoon (Tim Curry) may be involved.  The Angels take the case with their usual gusto, but quickly find out that the assignment may be a little trickier than they thought.

The Angels have several run-ins with a nameless character played by Crispin Glover (Nurse Betty), who has no lines, wields a cane like a Bond baddie and fights like Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix.  Their battles include many gravity-defying kicks, which look surprisingly believable from Liu and Diaz (but not Barrymore).  Strangely, Liu has landed in two of the best American action films of 2000 (this and Shanghai Noon), but Diaz really steals the show as the gangly Natalie. Barrymore does double duty as star and producer.

Angels is the feature film debut for McG, who has directed a bunch of popular music videos and award-winning commercials.  He paces the film well and adds a good mix of period music and modern rock, as well as the obligatory hipped-up version of the original theme song.  The best part about the film is that it never takes itself too seriously (they mock television-series-turned-feature-films in one scene) and, as a result, it looks like everybody had a blast making the movie (the closing credits include some funny outtakes).

1:34 - for adult language and violence