They're back... and having a blast in 'Full Throttle'

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

Cameron Diaz says she couldn't resist doing another "Charlie's Angels" movie with co-stars Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. In "Full Throttle," she even gets to surf. Sony Pictures

Even leaving aside — if that's even possible — the fact that the co-stars of the sequel "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" spend the entire interview stroking each other and holding hands in various configurations, this is one formidable trio. If Charlie had to go one-on-three with them, he would probably just hand over his detective agency and be done with it. He could then console himself with the fact that it was in good hands.

That's essentially what Columbia Pictures has done with "Full Throttle," the sequel to the 2000 action comedy based on the 1970s TV series about three crime-fighting babes in the employ of the never-seen Charlie.

Barrymore, an unapologetic fan of the show that ushered in the era of jiggle TV, had to persuade Columbia that a big-screen update not only could be fun and profitable but could transcend the sexist stereotypes with which it was associated. It would, she argued, be "empowering" for women and would take into account the way the world had changed in the past three decades. And, oh, did she mention that she wanted someone called McG, a music producer and video maker, to direct it?

"Every movie you make is a gamble," says Barrymore, who co-produced the original movie and sequel through her company, Flower Films. "But it's all about a vision, you know, and Lucy and Cameron and I knew what kind of movie we wanted to make. ... And McG knew exactly what kind of movie he wanted to make.

"Of course, what none of us knew is what chemistry we'd all have together. It was like putting together a rock band: 'Will people like our sound?' "

Not only did the public dig the sound of "Charlie's Angels," which would earn more than $125 million, the women dug each other. So much so that they became the sort of friends who not only can engage in public displays of affection without igniting tabloid rumors, but who, as Diaz says, will be doing things together for the rest of their lives, whether it's making movies or hanging out.

Still, they contend that making a "Charlie's Angels" sequel was "not something we had been secretly plotting all along," as Diaz puts it.

"We never, ever planned it as a franchise," says Diaz. "But we all had so much fun, and you saw that on-screen. So when McG came back with this concept that just took it to the next level, we couldn't resist. It was like, wait, we get to surf and ride motorcycles and hang out? Do we pay you?"

"And I got to dance," says Liu, whose first stage experience was in a production of Andre Gregory's "Alice in Wonderland" at the University of Michigan, where she received a bachelor's degree in Asian languages and culture.

"That's Lucy," says Diaz. "She's the chick in the group."

Liu does get to show off her feminine side in "Full Throttle," when, of course, she's not drop-kicking the bad guys into oblivion.

In this chapter, the women, assisted by a new Bosley (played by Bernie Mac after Bill Murray elected not to return), are working with the federal government to recover two encrypted rings. The rings contain the names of every person in the Witness Protection Program, a list very valuable to organized crime.

But that's basically an excuse for some remarkable action sequences imagined by McG, and for us, finally, to learn where the Angels came from and what they really want out of their lives. Will they be Angels forever, or will they eventually leave Charlie's employ, like mysterious Madison Lee, a former Angel played by Demi Moore?

"I know how it will look like when this is in print, but there really is a human element to this story," says Barrymore. "There's Lucy's relationship with her father" — played, in one of the film's many examples of great casting and surprise cameos, by John Cleese — "and my concern that Cameron's romance with Luke (Wilson) could break up the gang."

"And then I've got this whole thing with the choices I make in men, which comes back to haunt me in a big way."

Mining the vein of what we know, or what we think we know, about its three stars, "Full Throttle" has no shortage of inside jokes. Subjects include how many writers were allegedly employed on the first film, and, of course, Hollywood's new appetite for seeing women in revealing clothes kicking butt and taking names.

"You know what? We're just reflecting our audience with that," says Liu. "Women know that it's fun being sexy and sensual and that it's also something we use to get what we want, whether we always admit that or not."

That extends to the marketing of the film, which includes a 25-page photo spread in this month's issue of the "lad" magazine Maxim — which, per its just-short-of-Playboy peep-show format, means exposing lots of skin.

"But you know what? We're laughing in almost every one of those pictures," says Barrymore. "And we also have cover stories in Seventeen focusing on female friendship, and Self about fitness and training and women's health."

"All weapons in the old arsenal," says an unapologetic Diaz. "Hey, the Angels don't use guns. We work with what we have."

What they have, aside from old-fashioned movie-star glamour, is confidence and clout.

"We're all pretty opinionated and driven on our own," says Barrymore, "but put us together and we're like this total machine, unless we're too busy laughing our butts off.

"But we wouldn't have done this movie with anyone but McG, because he comes to the set every day knowing exactly what he wants and what he has to do to get it. He's just so together it's scary, and we have total trust in his judgment. If he says 'motocross,' it's like, 'Yeah, motocross, let's get it on.' "

Well, not exactly, says McG — who was born Joseph McGinty Nichol in Kalamazoo, Mich., and pronounces his moniker like the "Mc" in "McDonald's" with the letter "G."

"I'm flattered they would say that," the director says, "because I love them. But the truth is that everything we did was a compromise.

"They are all aggressive people, and they all have strong ideas about everything, and they're expressing them all the time. It's all horse-trading: 'OK, I'll do this, but I won't do that, and then you have to do this.' Everything was negotiation; I'd push them in one direction, and they'd push back. All movies are collaborations, but these are more collaborative than most."

And McG says he'd work with his three "Angels" again, in a heartbeat.

"I'd love to make a drama or a serious thriller or adventure movie with them. We click, but we all want to keep growing, moving in new directions."

For the moment, the Angels are all booked up. Liu will next be seen using her martial-arts skills and her U-Michigan degree — for which she learned to speak Japanese and use a samurai sword — in Quentin Tarantino's Hong Kong movie homage "Kill Bill."

Barrymore returns to romantic comedy and her "Wedding Singer" co-star Adam Sandler in "Fifty First Kisses" (filmed in Hawai'i), while Diaz reunites with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and the rest of the voice cast for "Shrek 2."

McG's next directing project will be an action movie that takes its title from the toy car collection Hot Wheels, or a biography of Evel Knievel, whichever comes out of development first.