Before we meet an angel, we are treated to a little jab at movies made from old TV shows. The folks traveling first class on an airplane are settling in for the movie, and it’s T.J. Hooker, The Movie. This little joke jumpstarts the opening sequence, which is a Bond-style spectacular that includes speed boats, sky-diving, an exploding bomb and a very funny rubber face transformation. Ladies love cool James, even angels!

By the time this opening action dazzler ends, we are speeding across the ocean with our three totally gorgeous babe crime fighters. They are Natalie, Dylan and Alex or Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. Each actress is fun to watch. They all look like they are having a great time.

After the Bond opener comes a second opener styled after the original television show. Charlie’s voice, John Forsythe as in the original show, tells us the story of three girls who grew up with very different interests. In hilarious video montages, we meet all three angels and get a taste of their personalities.

We see Natalie as a youth with Princess Leia hair and braces behind the wheel in driver’s ed making the car scream and spin while she squeals with delight. Alex is seen riding a horse to victory while “The Flying Lizards” sing their very caustic staccato cover of “Money.” Dylan is smoking in the girl’s room and making gestures at the video surveillance cam while Joan Jett wails in the background.

The daredevil, the snob and the bad girl are our angels. They are smart, super agile, super able and always good to go. They wear great clothes, eat cheeseburgers and fries and like each other a lot. They can paralyze men with their charms.

Men are generally made fun of pretty mercilessly. In one funny sequence, Alex poses as an efficiency expert, complete with riding crop, and mesmerizes a room full of geek boys with beige clothes, short sleeve shirts, ties, glasses and pocket protectors.

Angels often makes fun of men, but it gives male viewers the hope that really beautiful women can and do fall in love for guys far less perfect than themselves. Alex loves an actor played by Matt LeBlanc, an almost clone of his character Joey from Friends. Natalie falls for a tongue-tied but cute bartender named Pete. Dylan is a wild child, and her regular squeeze is a strange character who calls himself “the Chad.” Cameron Diaz is involved with Luke Wilson who plays Pete. Drew Barrymore is married to Tom Green, the Chad. This gives hope to regular guys everywhere. Of course, the guy who really fascinates them is the one they can’t even see, Charlie.

Angels makes about as much of a nod towards plot as an episode of Scooby Doo, but, hey, I love those meddling kids! A young, rather geeky software tycoon who has invented voice identification software more accurate than fingerprints has been kidnapped. The angels are hired to find and free him. The more insidious plot that they must thwart is an attempt on Charlie’s life.

The angels’ adventures take them down dark alleys, to swanky parties, to the races, into high speed chases, into the lab to invent gadgets to breach high-tech security systems and finally to a castle on the beach. Along the way, the ladies wear some hilarious outfits and do lots of wiggling. Have I mentioned that lots of things explode, crash and burn and these angels fly through the air kicking the daylights out of their enemies?

But these ladies are angels, so they are never in serious danger. They are aided and abetted by Bill Murray as Bosley, making the most out of the thin material he is given. Certainly Murray has the most eclectic filmography of 2000: Polonius in the recent modern day Hamlet and now Bosley.

For a more believable take on female empowerment in an action film with great martial arts sequences, don’t miss the upcoming Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. For fashion, fun and a dizzying parade of music cues, Charlie’s Angels will do nicely.

My only real complaint with Charlie’s Angels is that there is not enough hair. The entire TV show was about hair, long bouncing beautiful hair! Lucy Liu holds up the Jaclyn Smith brunette end of the affair, but where is the Farrah factor? Without the blond flopping wings are still a dominate style at the mall, can it really be Charlie’s Angels?