ANGELS WITH PRETTY FACES

t's safe to say that Charlie's Angels won't appear on the American Film Institute's next Top 100 list, but un less you're one of those people who order a muffin and a cappuccino at the concession stand, you must admit that, as Friday-night fare goes, Charlie's Angels pretty much kicks Citizen Kane's ass. Director McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol), a music-video veteran, clearly understands that you don't need artistic ambition when you've got Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu beating up bad guys, engaging in slow-motion martial-arts combat, operating military hardware, flexing all kinds of little-known muscles, and changing their outfits every 45 seconds. In the promisingly titled sequel, Charlie's An gels: Full Throttle, which Sony Pictures will release at the end of June, the heirs of Farrah Fawcett are instructed to retrieve a pair of silver bands~that contain the contact information for every ticipant in the f eral witness-protection program, a mission th requires the 90 surfing in barely-there bikinis and ride motor cycles whil• earing metallic breastplates. While much of the cast has returned for the sequel (including Crispin Glover as the indestructible Thin Man), there are a few new faces: Demi Moore takes ove~~?I~!~ss duties from Kelly Lynch, and Bernie Mac steps in as the "brother by another mother" of Bosley, played in the original by Bill Murray (whose reluctance to reprise roles helped doom the sequels to Meatballs and Coddyshack). "What you see on-screen is true: the girls was tight as a pair of drawers," Mac says, adding, "The look is fantastic, the skits are authentic. Part Two is gonna be better than Part One." It seems that nothing con doom this sequel.

MICHAEL HOGAN