Elizabeth Banks’ ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Trailer Is Here

Banks directs, produces, and stars in the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ reboot Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer June 27, 2019

“Charlie’s Angels” was a 70’s-era TV show about three beautiful women who leverage their smarts and sexualities to fight crime, doing the bidding of an invisible and omnipotent male boss, named Charlie.

Over forty years later, can “Charlie’s Angels” ever be strong enough to rip themselves free of the bonds of the patriarchy? That is, can “Charlie’s Angels” ever be feminist?

The answer put forth in the new movie reboot (the second of it’s kind, after the Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore version of the aughts,) by Jewish actress and director Elizabeth Banks — women can do anything men can. That is, they can make a shiny, sexy action reboot with upgraded racial diversity and wooden dialogue.

“I think women can do anything,” Kristen Stewart, the erstwhile star of the “Twilight” saga tells the camera, in the trailer’s first moments. It was at that moment that the Schmooze resigned to giving this movie our money, because corporate feminism is still so new that we’re grateful when big studios want to pander to us. Stewart stars alongside Naomi Scott (lately Jasmine in Disney’s live-action “Aladdin,”) and Ella Balinska, with Banks directing and starring as the first female Bosley, the Angels’ wrangler. Patrick Stewart and Noah Centineo also, charmingly, star.

There are backflips, sequins, dance sequences and compressed carotid arteries — in other words, what’s old is new again, and what’s new again uses more advanced CGI. We’ll happily exchange money for more time with Elizabeth Banks in November. Plus, just like all three “Pitch Perfect” movies, Banks co-produced “Angels” with her husband, Max Handelman. If that’s not Jewish couple goals, we don’t know what is.

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO