Last night I watched the new “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” movie (not yet on general release here in the UK, but it premiered on Monday) and the night before I watched “Charlies Angels II: Full Throttle“. So, which did I prefer and why?
Well, I’ve watched the original Charlies Angels movie and Bill Murray – a 53year old white guy – played John Bosley (usually just referred to as “Bosley” in the opposite way it’s always “Charlie” and never Mr.Townsend): however Bill Murray didn’t want to work with Lucy Liu (playing Alex Munday) again so he was replaced by Bernie Mac, a 45 year old black guy playing “Jimmy Bosley”. Close enough in the names for you to think they were family members, but… erm.. Secondly, apart from the “Can’t touch this” dance sequence around 15minutes in there was nothing memorable about the whole movie (well, the singer “Pink” was in the biking scene – but if you’ve seen her music video you’d have expected that: oh, and the fact that in the credits I discovered that “The Thin Man” was played by Crispin Glover – aka “George McFly” from the original Back To The Future). Oh, I also recognised Luke Wilson from “Blue Streak”).
A few other things kinda niggled me about the movie: sometimes it was the small things – like Alex carrying a 36-42″ TV (and holding it for some time) but with the screen away from her (have you tried carrying a large TV like that?), the plot being a bit silly (rescuing two rings that containing all the details of every person in the “witness protection programme”: erm, what happens where a new witness needs protecting?), and the fact that John Cleese was in it (playing Lucy Liu’s father) as more of a “long running throwaway joke” where he’s made to think the Alex is some sort of call girl/working girl. Oh – and those extremely good binoculars on the beach scene where they can see a scar on a surfers knee over 60ft away…
So after I’ve decimated Charlies Angles II, what about Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines?
First of all, when you hear the nickname “The Terminatrix” (referring to the red, leather clad 23 year old Kristanna Loken) do also think that there is a potential for a cross over between Terminator 3 and The Matrix? “The Rise Of The Matrix: Dominatrix” with just leather clad Kristanna and leather/PVC clad Carrie Ann Moss? I know plenty of blokes that would see that 😉
It’s actually quite a good film – and there’s actually a storyline between all the action. Maybe the road chase scene was a little bit too long, but it was really enjoyable. It starts a off a little bit strange (we don’t realise why the Terminatrix – or to give her her proper classification – the “T-X” – is killing the suspects until little), has a little bit of comedy (the “What is Sexy?” and “Arnie gets dressed” sections for instance), has a reasonable believable storyline (ok SkyNet manages to infect all different types of computers but not the ones that control the automatic doors and things: oh, and how did Skynet start infecting things before it was released?), and is quite well paced.
Thumbs up to Terminator 3, thumbs down to Charlies Angels II.
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