The 4th Charlie’s Angels incarnation is the first to only feature two Angels; not a great start when a third of your main characters don’t bother showing up.

“Maybe she’s stuck in traffic.”

Elizabeth Banks’ reboot starts with Kristen Stewart saying “I think women can do anything” and goes on to disprove that by having them fail to make a satisfying Charlie’s Angels movie. In fairness neither could McG, so Banks achieves equality if nothing else. She opens the film with a montage of young girls as a kind of pseudo-feminist mission statement, but the picture isn’t radically different from the 2000 version, other than having worse action, acting and music. This would have been the perfect time for Destiny’s Child to do Independent Women Part 3, instead of the Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey theme that goes to show that when angels fall, the results are diabolical.

We then meet the other Angel (Ella Balinska) and a whistleblower (Naomi Scott) who joins the super-spies to stop a dangerous energy conservation device from falling into the wrong hands, aided on their mission by Bosley (Banks), Bosley (Patrick Stewart) and Bosley (Djimon Hounsou). Bosley is a rank now rather than a person, which seems unnecessarily confusing in a mission situation. The generic action plays out with zero chemistry, unfunny dialogue (“Hamburg, where hamburgers weren’t invented.”) and badly shot combat, ultimately demonstrating that Charlie’s Angels probably isn’t a good vehicle for feminism; like how Bond isn’t a vehicle for woke masculinity. Tell those stories a new way, or do one where the Angels break free of Charlie and call it Charlie’s Angels Uncaged or something.

There’s trace amounts of fun to be had from both Stewarts, but the stale execution feels as old as the Stuarts.