It took three writers to knock out this impressively vacuous blockbuster - presumably two to hold the paper, while the other handled crayons.

As in the similarly dim part one, our heroines are Dylan (Drew Barrymore), Alex (Lucy Liu) and Natalie (Cameron Diaz), crime-fighting totty who work for the mysterious Charlie (voiced by John Forsythe, who lent his purr to the original 70s TV series, too).

The girls, as the promotional material so wittily puts it, "kick ass" in a series of semi-coherent set-pieces strung together by some guff about stealing two 'Halo' rings, which together reveal the new identities of everyone in the US Witness Protection Programme.

Perhaps this next bit's meant to be a secret, but you'd have to be George W not to realise that the villain is sultry ex-Angel Madison Lee (Demi Moore). She plans to sell the information to various revenge-seeking crime families (Chinese, Irish, Italian - you can't trust those damn immigrants).

Moore's enjoyably vampy, in a role seemingly designed to showcase that she can still look good in a bikini (despite spawning three kids and spending three years off-screen).

Diaz, too, doesn't see her spark snuffed totally by the dire material. But she's too good an actress for this drivel - a fine, charismatic performer whose $20-million role just requires her to wear very little and shake her backside at McG's hyperactive camera. Some call it girl power. Others demeaning.

Sexual politics aside (think: Russ Meyer), the jokes are limp (snigger) - either smutty or plain stupid. There is one half-decent gag, involving Alex's dumb actor boyfriend (Matt LeBlanc) starring in "Mission: Impossible 2"-alike "Maximum Extreme 2" ("ME-2" - geddit?), but that's scant return for 105 minutes of your life.

Still, "Charlie's Angels" was a huge hit and if you loved the first you'll love this too. But it amounts to cinema for goldfish, so empty that even the makers can't remember what happened five seconds ago.