Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

Variety Amy Dawes

Bigger, sleeker and better than the first, sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is a joyride of a movie that takes the winning elements of the year 2000 hit to the next level.

Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)

Let's face it: Chick power was never this yummy.

Time Richard Schickel

After “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Hulk,” there's something refreshing about this movie's complete lack of intellectual pretense.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This heavenly sequel, again directed by "McG" (aka Joseph McGinty Nichol), is infused with an irresistibly joyous spirit that simply cannot be faked.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie's glee is contagious.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The spike-heeled, postfeminist pajama-party sisterhood that is Charlie's Angels is back, and it's serious dress-up time.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

You may strain to recall just what happened an hour after you see it, but there are so many worse things to have to remember in life. It's a relief to focus on something so attractively amusing.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Isn't only the silliest, most ridiculous movie of the summer; it may also be the most flat-out fun.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The main reason I enjoyed this high-powered action flick and its 2001 predecessor is their willingness to poke fun at the premise of crime-fighting dolls, even though it now has more currency than ever.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A loud and frequently funny clown show, Full Throttle is less a grim demolition derby than a day at Coney Island, punctuated by the clatter and screams of the Cyclone.

The New Yorker David Denby

The movie is immensely pleased with itself, in the manner of adorable kids who know they can get away with anything--the commercial opportunism is so self-confident in its silliness that you can’t really fight it. [7 July 2003, p. 84]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Harmless, brainless, good-natured fun.

Slate David Edelstein

Full Throttle is full-throttle camp: It's like a third-rate Austin Powers picture cut to the whacking, attention-deficit-disorder tempo of "Moulin Rouge."

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

It's a movie devoted to showing it, shaking it and selling it with huge zest and self-delight, a movie that raises MTV-style dada to the status of superheated mama, even though, toward the end, it wears awfully thin rather than svelte.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

As insistent as it is skillful -- and it is very skillful -- it does all it can to pound you into enjoying yourself. The result is rather like being force-fed a meal of your favorite foods by the Terminator.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's flashy, it's often funny ...,and it resembles a movie so much that soon it demands something resembling motivation, character, a plot, anything to explain the seemingly arbitrary connections between the stunts and the skits.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

A sequel whose sugar-rush absurdity almost defeats the forces of logic, taste and conventional narrative. It is a defect that might undermine a lesser movie but that in this case proves to be as cheerfully, enjoyably humid as the first blast of summer light and heat.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

So relentlessly giddy and hyperactive that it doesn’t really need a movie review--it needs a prescription.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Should have been either a whole lot worse or a whole lot better than it is: If it were worse, we could simply toss aside the things that are fun and entertaining about it and not even think twice. And if it were better -- well, we'd have fewer complaints all around.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Its purpose is simply to allow you to soak up the happy grrrrl-power vibes of this easy-on-the-eyes trio amid unevenly executed computer-enhanced action scenes, at which points the movie resembles a video game.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

All of the actresses are fun to watch, and as much attention appears to have been lavished on their outfits and hairdos as on their high-flying fight scenes.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The action is ridiculously overwrought, a state-of-the-art combination of CGI wizardry and Hong Kong-style wirework so removed from the laws of physical reality that it might as well be animated.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Proudly airheaded, incoherent, endlessly pandering - yet fitfully entertaining.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Clearly, this is something rare: a movie that insulates itself against its own rottenness by being lousy by design.

Newsweek David Ansen

This is one of the silliest movies ever made--and lots of instantly forgettable fun.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It worked once, but the novelty factor is gone. The cheese is still there, but this time it's overlaid with a cynical sense that the only reason the movie exists is because the first one made so much money.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

Nothing deeper than a stale retread, it seems. And this is coming from a critic who listed the original "Charlie's Angels" movie as one of the top five films of 2000.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The film is smart enough to know that verbal humor isn't its strong point, but it doesn't offer much in the way of compensation.

Film Threat Kevin Carr

Tries to be bigger and better than the first "Charlie’s Angels." It achieves the bigger, but the better is sorely lacking.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Can't sustain its manic pitch, or work the McMiracle needed to overcome a script (credited to three writers, though more were no doubt afoot) that's less a story than a sales pitch.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The shreds have vanished in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, which runs at that speed during its stunts but is utterly out of gas in every other way.

USA Today Mike Clark

There are only so many times you can see a slow-motion kickboxing scene or a figure sail off a skyscraper before you want to spend a nice, cozy evening with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Two-hour exercise in chaotic action and coarse, annoyingly coy sexuality.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

That sense of fun is jackhammered into our skulls. The tongue that was so firmly in cheek last time has punctured through muscle and bone.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A less cohesive action-comedy than its predecessor, Full Throttle is instead a freewheeling collection of random action sequences strung together with little or no discernible rhyme or reason.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

What fans of the original movie, "Charlie's Angels," which was fun and good-natured, will make of this sloppy mess is hard to guess.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Something cold and mechanical has seeped into the sequel. The divas push so hard for fun, it kills the spontaneity that fun needs to breathe.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Isn't a full-bodied comedy, and it isn't a bona fide action movie, either. It just makes a facetious spectacle of itself.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

As for me, watching this overripe, ignorant parading of Hollywood privilege an hubris put me in mind of a different song--Neil Young's "Revolution Blues." Specifically the bit about Laurel Canyon being filled with famous stars . . .