Charlie’s Angels: Throw Your Hands up at Me

Charlie’s Angels is delightful. I don’t care what reviews you’ve seen or what nonsense you’ve heard from the masses. It is a movie about three ladies who get into car chases and high-stakes action sequences where they take down bad guys with flair and I. AM. HERE. FOR. THIS.

Written, directed, and produced by Elizabeth Banks, who also plays a meaty supporting role as Bosley, the Angels’ handler (as if she didn't have enough to do already), the movie is a fun thrill ride. Is the plot really important? Nope. The Angels have to chase down some people who have stolen a weapon that could assassinate people anywhere in the world and cause utter chaos. You know, the usual. What is important are the women playing the Angels this time around. We’ve got Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska, all of whom have interesting back stories, wildly different skill sets, but the same level of badassery that makes it so much fun to cheer for them for two hours straight.

The showing I went to had a row of preteen girls who were all excited to see it. Granted they were super annoying and seemed to be engaged in all manner of offscreen drama about who was friends with whom and how the seating arrangements should be constantly shuffled, but putting that aside, I was so glad that this movie existed for them. I was thirteen when the 2000 film starring Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Drew Barrymore came out, and I remember going to the theater to see it with my girlfriends and loving it so much. We also sang Destiny's Child's "Independent Women" that was on the movie soundtrack for about a year. Nineteen years later, I saw this reboot with one of my best friends from college and we had just as much fun. And this time around a woman directed the movie - progress!

This movie is fun. That’s what it genuinely aspires to be. It is a bunch of women in wonderfully choreographed fight scenes having a bonkers good time and you would have to be a complete Scrooge to object to any of it. It’s not some philosophical feminist treatise, it’s Charlie’s Angels. But it is unapologetically feminine and fabulous, and we could always use more movies like this. Every generation of teenage girls needs an action movie that speaks to their power; and so do I. Keep 'em coming ladies.