On the night we went to see "Charlie's Angels," we were chastised by a mutual friend, a hardcore feminist who told us both, "I hope you're slumming." The next evening, after we had come out of the theater kickboxing our way down Market Street, I settled in with a cigarette and glass of wine on my front stoop. I consider my front stoop both my living room (it's where I go to smoke) and my community sounding board (it's where I go to test out my theories of the day by talking to the neighbors).

Most nights, I'm talking about the election or the next party or whatever new book or magazine I'm reading. That night, I couldn't stop talking about how much I loved this fab new movie recycled from a '70s TV show about three jumpsuited women at the beck and call of a disembodied male voice.

"Saw it, loved it," said my 22-year-old tough-chick neighbor who gets kicked out of parties for beating up on boys and supports her acting career by working for a San Francisco Realtor and as a makeup artist. Another neighbor, a 40-something intellectual who often quizzes me on what I've read this week, in, say, the New York Review of Books, looked appalled, then concerned. "But you can't be serious? I would think you'd find it deeply offensive."

Me, too. The trailer -- which featured Cameron Diaz jiggling her booty in her Underoos (but hey, they were Spiderman Underoos with a fly) and inviting her UPS man to "Stick something in my slot anytime," and Drew Barrymore covering her lush naked body with plastic pool furniture while demanding help from two saucer-eyed little boys -- seemed like nothing so much as an outrageous flesh fest, with neither irony nor intellect. When I noticed that the promo posters had replaced the famous angels' silhouettes of three babes with guns with three babes with Kung Fu hands, I was a little irked: What, Dirty Harry gets a big gun, but Dirty Harriet has to make do with the moves she learned in women's self-defense class? But damn, those fight scenes looked cool.

As it turns out, I loved it. It had nothing to do with the plot, which, like most action movies, is as skimpy as Diaz's bikini and disposable as a used hand grenade. And I could write an essay about Charlie as the voice of patriarchy, the trio of hotties as objectified inflatable sex dolls and questioned why all the angels' crime fighting had to be done in revealing jumpsuits. (I was once a women's studies major.)

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