An Ode To The Best Joke In ‘Charlie’s Angels’

With the Charlie’s Angels reboot arriving in cinemas this week, we’re ultra nostalgic for the ’00s films — last week, we paid homage to Sam Rockwell’s sexual energy in the first film, and now, we pay attention to a short scene that features an incredibly dumb, obvious joke that breaks us out into hysterics every single time.

Both the 2000 film and 2003 sequel Full Throttle may have been critically panned at release, but over time, they’ve nestled into the sweet spot of ‘pseudo-sexy camp’ appreciation. Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore are excellent comedic actresses, and there’s barely a single scene that’s played without some sort of nod or wink to the ridiculousness of the ’70s original series: it’s not quite Austin Powers, but it’s certainly not Mission Impossible, either.

For all its race car sequences, nudie runs, and action montages, it’s the film’s 54 second drive-thru scene that deserves high praise. In it, the Angels go through a drive-thru to pick up some lunch in-between saving the ‘kidnapped’ Eric Knox (Rockwell). Let’s break it down.

While Destiny’s Child’s tie-in song ‘Independent Woman, Pt. 1’ plays in the background, Dylan (Barrymore) drives them pretty shoddily up to the drive-thru order box. Meanwhile, Natalie (Diaz) sits in the back with a portable DVD-player looking computer decoding some CCTV to track a subject, and Alex (Liu) leans over Dylan to fix the malfunctioning drive-thru speaker, giving the camera a very generous ass shot while she’s at it — but it’s not pure sex appeal, as the reach over is incredibly awkward, and played for laughs.

She crosses the wires; Natalie finds ‘Creepy Thin Man’ (aka freakish love of my life and oddball auteur Crispin Glover), and Dylan orders, all while they’re discussing their next course of action; everything is just too easy for the Angels. Their order of choice? “I’d like three cheeseburgers, three fries and three cherry pies,”  says Dylan. “What do you guys want?”, she says, turning to her crew.

It is impossible for me to watch this without laughing an obscene amount at this line. Sincerely; Charlie’s Angels transforms the most dad joke of all-time into something so dorky-dumb that it catches me off-guard each time I watch. It’s also absolutely endearing, surmising the goofy tone of the film and the characters in just one small, overlooked moment: it plays with our expectations of what these characters should say, eat and be, and like the tongue-in-cheek Brady Bunch films, it shows how far we are from the original show.

If you don’t find this funny, either my brain is broken or you don’t like Charlie’s Angels: likely both. Watch it below.