Ally McBeal S04E24

We zoom in on the clouds in the background of the Columbia logo, so we're warned early on that we'll be watching a movie directed by someone who thinks being a movie director is "neat." As the music gets louder and the clouds get bigger, an airplane turns up, and the director, giddy with his new toy and huge budget, tries to create the impression that the camera dollies right into the aircraft at 50,000 feet.

Inside, in First Class, there are nuns. There are other people visible in the shot, but for some reason, I can't take my eyes off the nuns. It might be because Nuns=Comedy, but it's probably because I can't figure out why nuns are traveling First Class. Progressing down the aisle, we pass a catty flight attendant boasting that he zinged a passenger thus: "Look, lady, it's not the seats that have gotten smaller. It's your ass that's gotten bigger." If that's the first line in the script, how did anyone keep reading until the second page? The camera doesn't linger on the unfortunate witticism, since the director is more interested in showing us the people packed into Coach. We see people are getting bags out of overhead bins, people trying to sleep, and two people sneaking into the lavatory for sex. I imagine that's supposed to be saucy. Another lavatory opens, and a black man in an African robe comes out, rubbing the back of his neck. He walks to first class, where the catty flight attendant tries to stop him. But he's got a ticket. In your face, catty flight attendant! Yes, the man would like a drink: "Scotch. Blended. Straight." The passenger points a forefinger like a gun at the flight attendant. We're still following the same shot as the man walks into First Class, and I'm able to focus a little better this time because the angle hides the nuns from view. I'm still a little distracted, because now I can't help imagining the nuns crouched just off-screen. The man, who turns out to be LL Cool J, sits in the front row to an edgy man. They exchange code phrases to the effect that birds can't fly this high (but angels can), and LL shows Edgy Man some diamonds. Now LL would like to know where the bomb is, please. "I am the bomb," responds Edgy Man. The large, easy-to-read display shows that there's less than a minute to go before the bombs wrapped around his waist go off. LL's cutting it kind of close, here. The catty flight attendant shows up with LL's teeny bottle of scotch, and leaves the shot in time for us to see that the in-flight entertainment is T.J. Hooker: The Movie. And here I always thought that First Class passengers were watching better movies than the rest of us. LL takes a stab at wry, self-aware commentary be complaining about "another movie from an old TV show." "Whaddya gonna do?" asks Edgy Man. "Walk out," responds LL. After a couple more lines which I don't have the strength to recap, LL grabs Edgy Man and drags him to the emergency exit, which he opens with a kick. Then, because there's really only one sensible option when you've got a mad bomber on an airplane, LL jumps out of the hatch with his arms wrapped around Now Very Edgy Indeed Man. From the perspective of the jet, the two of them shoot straight backwards, spinning madly around and barely missing the tail section. That was close! Now they just have to worry about plummeting to their deaths.

On the way down, LL and Now Very Edgy Indeed Man pass a helicopter that somehow knew exactly where they'd be. Someone jumps out of the helicopter, and time stops just long enough for us to identify her as Lucy Liu. Then time speeds back up before you notice that I'm lying about that. There was a bit of slow motion, but we don't see Liu for another few seconds. When we do, time stops again, creating the impression of a film editor who keeps accidentally nudging the speed control back and forth. This impression will be reinforced later on. Liu is falling like a torpedo, which means that she's able to catch up to LL and Well Past Edgy Man and remove the bomb-belt. It blows up in mid-air, scattering the three of them. LL turns his African robe into a parachute while Liu grabs on to Screaming and Wetting Himself Man and deploys her own parachute. In the water below them, we see a speedboat being piloted by Cameron Diaz in a bikini. This movie is empowering, you know. It tells teenage girls that as long as you're gorgeous, have three or four hundred marketable skills, and can beat the crap out of anyone who looks at you cross-eyed, it's okay to wear a bikini to work.

Liu neatly parachutes into the boat and drops Whimpering and Terrified Man. Then she takes off her helmet and shakes her hair in slow motion, because that's the sort of thing you're supposed to do when you're one of Charlie's Angels. It's in the job description, right to the number of required costume changes per case. Then she and Cameron exchange wide, happy, vacant-eyed smiles. LL lands in the boat as Angry and Panicked Man calles him a "crazy bastard." "I think you mean 'crazy bitch,'" he responds, ripping his face off to reveal Drew Barrymore shaking her hair in slow motion. I guess it's true what they say: inside every great rapper is a little blonde woman trying to get out. There's more happy smiling as the boat runs happily over the waves and into the smiling opening credits.

"Once upon a time, there were three very different little girls..." Cameron, who I shall now start calling "Natalie," is a student driver in braces while Wham! plays on the soundtrack. She's driving a car tilted up on two wheels like she's on Dukes of Hazzard. Lucy, or "Alex," is winning a Steeplechase with that cool cover of "Money: That's What I Want" by the Flying Lizards. Drew's a bad girl, smoking in the bathroom (with a Plot Point Zippo Lighter) while Joan Jett's "I Love Rock & Roll" blares. We learn that her name is actually "Dylan" as she flips off the security camera. Dude, if this is the bad-girl smoking bathroom, how'd that security camera survive past its first day?

"...who grew up to be three very different women." Natalie (that's Cameron) wins $118,599 on Jeopardy in an attempt to convince us that although she acts like a ditz, she's really very smart. "But they have three things in common." Alex (Lucy) is an astronaut. "They're brilliant. They're beautiful." Dylan (Drew) punches out her instructor in police school. "And they work for me. My name is Charlie."

Angels crawl through the jungle. Angels skateboard. Angels are in a rock band. Angels are disguised as monks. Angels read a New York Post that says "Mystery Women Save Mount Rushmore." Angels fence. Angels take off their fencing masks to shake their hair in slow motion. Angels are in chains. Angels run. Angels jump as the sky behind them turns red and catches fire. Yikes.

Oh, and if I didn't have enough to deal with, Tom Green is here. And he's singing. No, Tom, I will not call you "Angel of the Morning." You're lucky I'm willing to call you "Chad." He wakes up Dylan and calls her "Starfish" while she looks around her, clearly wondering how many days her blackout lasted. She recognizes Chad and gives him a look which is either loving or pitying. "I figure we could have a little breakfast, and maybe after? We could have a little Chad," says Chad, determined to annoy me every second that he's on-screen. Dylan's phone rings, and thank God it's time for her to go. While she's on the phone, she's all business, despite the fact that she's got lipstick smeared on her cheek. And that she's naked in Tom Green's bed.

Chad's boat is named "Betsy". I mention that because I'm desperately averting my eyes from Tom Green's performance as he asks her if she's leaving because of "the Chad." Six months ago, there were some strained jokes about "hanging chads," and I think I have to leave this area alone. It will take years for the funny to grow back, and it has to happen naturally. Someday, future generations will be able to make jokes here, but the hurt's just too recent. Dylan gets in her convertible and zooms off. There's some more Tom Green hijinks.

Natalie performs a big, MTV Movie Award-winning dance number. Between the MTV awards and the World Stunt Awards, this movie won quite a number of low-level meaningless trophies. I wonder if there's a place where you can trade in ten of those for a Golden Globe, or at least a big stuffed teddy bear. The dance scene -- which is set to "Heaven Must be Missing an Angel" -- ends when Natalie wakes up. Then she dances around her bedroom in her Spider-Man Underoos, watching her own butt in the mirror. Which, be honest, you'd do too if you had Cameron Diaz's butt. I mean, instead of your own -- not if you had it in a box or something.

Natalie opens the front door to sign for a UPS package and commit some entirely accidental double entendres, including, "You know, I signed that release waiver, so you can just feel free to stick things in my slot." And she has no idea why the guy looks worried at this. But she's a genius. Really. Extremely smart. Even though she immediately turns and walks into the wall when her phone rings.

The scene is, I swear, a matchbox car and trailer. We hear Alex and a mysterious man, who will probably turn out to be another Special Guest Star. In fact, we recognize the voice right away as Matt LeBlanc of TV's Friends, because even though he's not doing Joey's voice, he's playing a movie star, so he's doing Joey's "Bad Actor" voice. Alex says that "this is going to be long, hard, and rough," and it sounds to me like she understands the potential double meaning there. Assuming they're not just talking about sex in the first place. Which they're not, because her line is, "If you don't defuse this bomb, Logan, L.A.'s gonna be a new underwater attraction."

And then it turns out they're just running lines. And her muffins are ready. Logan (which I guess is really the name of the character that Le Blanc's character is playing) asks questions about the script, and Alex goes on about "external feedback circuits," "titanium shells," and the whether you should cut the red wire or the blue wire, because, you see, she's secretly a bomb expert. "Wow. You know, for a bikini waxer, you know an awful lot about bombs," says Logan, moving in on Alex while I wonder how she picked this secret identity. Is she his personal live-in bikini waxer, or is it one of those jobs that it's safe to claim because no one's going to ask you to demonstrate it? Alex turns around and seductively says, "Isn't it amazing how much information you can learn off of the internet?" I know that doesn't sound very seductive, but it seems to be working on Joey. I mean, "LeBlanc." No, I mean, "Logan." Even though his character's real name is Jason Gibbons. It's already hard enough to suspend my disbelief in this movie without being able to recognize all the actors. A cell phone breaks up the prospect of lovin', and there's the traditional mixup where each person thinks his own phone is ringing. This is because everybody in the movies has the same ring. It's a little inconvenient, but at least they don't have to listen to a beeping version of "Ode to Joy" wherever they go. The call is for Alex, and she has to go. Before she makes it out of the scene, Logan spits out his muffin, alerting us to the fact that Alex is a bad cook. So although all three are beautiful geniuses, each has one flaw: one's a bad cook, one's a clumsy idiot, and one sleeps with Tom Green. And this is the team that saved Mount Rushmore?

At the Agency Building, the Angels are talking about Alex's relationship with Jason, so that's what I'll be calling him from now on, instead of "Logan." Alex hands out blueberry muffins, and there's an awkward pause before Natalie turns on the enthusiasm. When Alex turns her back, Dylan throws her muffin at Natalie, who retaliates. Her throw misses, however, and the muffin is embedded in the door. Because not only was it badly made, it's also rock hard. And now, put the phrase "rock hard" completely out of your heads as Bill Murray enters to play Bosley and, if we're lucky, get this movie going. But first, Bill's going to tell us about a buddy of his who took a fighting muffin in the chest. They sent him home in four Ziploc bags. It's the kind of anecdote that makes you think, "I bet Bill brought in his own script to work that day." That impression is reinforced when the shot has all three Angels snuggled in around Bosley as he tells them something about rhino hearts. Apparently, they have romantic troubles a lot, because of their secret identities.

The phone rings. It's Charlie. Maybe he has a plot for us. "Good morning, Angels." "Good morning, Charlie!" Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell, who was the security officer in Galaxy Quest) is a billionaire who owns a software company and, in the videotape they're being shown, climbs trees and flies helicopters. He was kidnapped, and his voice-identification software stolen. I find it interesting that the CEO of the company has the latest software on his person. I also find it interesting that the kidnapping took place directly in front of a parking garage security camera that was equipped with a microphone so that we could hear tires screech. When Eric's kidnappers have roared out of sight, the woman who's left is Vivian Wood (Kelly Lynch, who I remember from the terrible movie Three of Hearts. Do yourself a favor, and don't look that movie up). Upon hearing that Vivian is the President of the company, Natalie says, "Oh, she did it." So naturally, Vivian walks in the room, because she's the one who hired them. Charlie (who is a voice on a speakerphone; I can't believe you didn't know that) suggests that Eric's main enemy was Roger Corwin, owner of Red Star Systems, which owns many communications satellites. Roger tried to buy out Knox Technologies six months ago, so he's obviously evil. Also, he's played by Tim Curry, so there you go. Most of my favorite Tim Curry appearances are when he's a villain: Legend, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 33% of the endings of Clue, and so on. There has been no ransom note, so Corwin is their only lead. He gets a weekly massage at "Madame Wong's House of Blossoms," which means it's time for costume changes!

Corwin's first line is "He said what? Over my dead body!" which just gets me thinking of Clue again. He's lying face-down under a towel when some legs walk into the room, attached to Alex. She rubs oil into her hands and says, "At your service." Then I wonder why the oil's on her hands because it's one of those massages where she walks on Corwin's back. I guess it might have been chalk to hold onto the ceiling bar better. She rubs her feet on Corwin's face (a little something for the freaks in the audience) before hitting a pressure point and sending him on the Dozyland Express.

The opening riff to "Turning Japanese" hits as Natalie and Dylan walk into the room, also dressed like the kind of masseuse you'd expect to find at Madame Wong's House of Blossoms. Alex grabs Corwin's locker key off his wrist and they go to work on his locker. They duplicate his car key with what looks like a compact case full of goo and download his schedule off his Palm Pilot. I would have thought that if they could do all that, they could probably break into his locker without going to the effort of dressing up like masseuses and rendering him unconscious, but I guess my plan doesn't involve Lucy Liu's thighs. Come to think of it, maybe that's the flaw in all my plans. When Corwin wakes up, Enigma is playing, and he feels the need to offer Alex a place on his staff. The banter gets ugly, so let's move on.

The three Angels, having changed clothes, pull up to a drive-through in Dylan's white convertible. While Dylan tries to advance the plot, Alex leans over her, pulls out a Swiss Army Knife, and disassembles and fixes the drive-through speaker. I love that, seriously. It's like the logical extension of correcting the spelling on signs.

Natalie has "enhanced the image" from the garage security cameras. In standard movie tradition, she's able to create a perfectly focused full-color image from the black-and-white video cameras. Alex names the guy "Creepy Thin Man," even though everyone in the audience recognizes him as Crispin Glover and promptly starts yelling "Hello? McFly?" in their heads. Well, I do, anyway. Dylan is pleased that they have a bad guy now. And all three of them are pleased that Corwin is having a party tonight, because they must have been in these outfits a good two minutes, and it's obviously time for a costume change.

Corwin's party is heralded by not one but two of those four-spotlight twirly things outside his skyscraper. I'm out of my element here, because the only spotlights you see at the parties with which I am familiar are the kind shining down from police helicopters, alerting guests to disperse. Across the street from the skyscraper, the three Angels and Bosley put magic beans in their mouths that will allow them to converse easily via the power of radio waves.