Episode 167: Charlie’s Angels (2000)

Good morning, angelic listeners! We’re serving up another tasty tv dinner of “I Made From TV Love You!” And what will you find when you peel back the aluminum foil? Why, right there, next to the tater tots, is “Charlie’s Angels,” from director McG (no, he’s not McDonald’s new Happy Director Meal . . . or is he?) and producer Drew Barrymore, this cinematic adaptation takes on the pioneering tv show of the 70’s that bravely offered up the notion that women would be detectives, as long as they showed plenty of cleavage and wore a lot of evening dresses.  Working for a never-seen mysterious detective, these three women fight crime with the aid of Bosley, the most Watson-y bumbling sidekick since Nigel Bruce.  And why did they never meet/see/learn anything about Charlie? Because of that crime-fighting duo Stuff and Reasons tm! So does this movie follow in the high-heeled footsteps of its progenitor? Give a listen and see what Charlie says (spoiler: it has nothing to do with Good n’ Plenty candy).

Poll question: has product placement ever worked on you? Have you ever wanted to buy something placed in a movie?

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6 thoughts on “Episode 167: Charlie’s Angels (2000)”

  1. Product placement has never worked on me. If anything, I’m turned off to the product just because it’s been put in a movie. One time it actually pissed me off. In “Strictly Ballroom,” the main characters have a scene dancing on the roof of the dance studio in front of a big paillette-covered Coca Cola sign. The production company actually had to pay Coke for the use of that sign. Arg…That being said, there has occasionally been a prop or set dressing that I would love to have that’s never (to my knowledge) been marketed. I’d love to have one of the T-shirts the workers in Oz are wearing (the green ones that just say “Oz” on the front).

    1. See, and that coke sign never felt like product placement to me, just something that happened to be there and made the place feel a bit more shabby and cheap. Stinks that they had to pay for it. Thanks for the answer, Val! Have a pile of Pony Bux!

  2. I saw this when it came out and thought it was great fun and the skimpy costumes and all that seemed, to me, to be more a send up of the tv show by showing how ridiculous it was. Barrymore seemed to know exactly what she wanted from this and got it. (Btw: watch her in Grey Gardens, the drama based on the documentary, she is amazing in it. )

    Few things take me out of a movie like product placement and it turns me off completely from whatever they want to sell. Some products become associated with film, like maybe Bond cars are a good example of doing it in the context of the film. In your face, turn the logo towards the camera when drinking a soda just makes me groan out loud.

    1. I will totally agree with the soda comment. The worst one I remember was in Godzilla ’85 in some of the added-in American footage. Two army guys were facing each other in a corridor with a VERY well lit Dr. Pepper machine was right between them in the background. Gah. Thanks, Vince! You, too maybe a giant heap of ‘Bux!

      1. OMG I saw that with my friend Rod and we were actually mad it was so in our faces! You must have been that other person in the theatre watching it!

        1. I was not in the same theater; I saw it in the old hometown Cinema where 1.50 bought you the finest entertainment to be found overlooking 128.

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