KINDA HIP, KINDA COOL, KINDA WOW, KINDA 'CHARLIE'S' THESE THREE HAD FUN MAKING 'ANGELS' - JUST ASK THEM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

It's about fun and empowerment and sexiness and no guns but lots of explosions. It's about 21st-century girl power but respecting that most dignified of 1970s pop culture aesthetics: running around braless. It's about being capable and doing physically impossible feats and dressing goofy and acting silly and dancing badly and ... did we mention being capable?

It's about last-minute casting and 30 script drafts and shooting the thing before anyone really knew what, well, it was really about. It's about media speculation (fights on set!) and subsequent media manipulation (we all loved each other so much!).

It's about so many things, this $90 million-plus movie adaptation of the cheeseball '70s action series ``Charlie's Angels.'' But incoherent and contradictory as most of the elements are that have been stuffed into this semi-satirical swirl of postliterate, postfeminist sensation cinema, one thing about the movie is extremely, unmistakably clear.

It's very much about hair.

Coiled together on a fancy hotel suite sofa, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu repeatedly twirl one another's locks, a habit picked up during their movie's demanding - but fun and capable! - production.

``We love hair,'' says Barrymore, who co-produced the big-screen ``Angels'' and plays the auburn-tressed tough girl of the trio, Dylan.

``It's a girly-girl thing,'' adds Liu, the long-haired brunette who plays the ``classy'' Angel, Alex.

``Do you ever fold paper or tap your pen, any kind of tactile, fidgety thing? It's sort of like that,'' says California blonde Cameron Diaz (a k a Angel Natalie, the wacky one), her fingers busily enmeshed in her co-stars' longer manes.

And that's understandable. The three young actresses have a lot to be fidgety about these days.

To begin with, like most TV-show-to-movie transfers, ``Charlie's Angels'' has some fundamental skepticism to overcome. For every ``Fugitive'' and ``Mission: Impossible''-level hit derived from a boomer tube staple, there have been dozens of ``McHale's Navy,'' ``Avengers'' and ``Mod Squad''-style stinkers.

And the source series here is a particularly dicey one. When the original show - about three frustrated policewomen played, initially, by Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith who find more fulfillment working as private detectives for the mysterious, never-seen Charlie Townsend - first appeared in 1976, its reliance on bikinis and T-shirts drew cries of ``massage parlor television'' from some quarters.

``I used to meet with various women's groups who would say we were exploiting women,'' notes Leonard Goldberg, one of the TV series' producers and part of the movie's gaggle of co-producers. ``I would say, 'We don't apologize for what we're doing.' I never got it; yes, they were beautiful, yes, they sometimes ran in bikinis. But if you watch the old show, what they labeled as 'jiggle television' then would be laughed at today. It would be labeled G-minus.''

Perhaps. But another thing that was apparently going on below the radar of both feminists and the show's numerous male fans was a kind of role-modeling; one that three little girls named Lucy, Cameron and Drew picked up on.

``I was 4 years old when the original series started, so I used to see my older sister playing it,'' says ex-model Diaz. ``I thought it was just so cool. I just saw the Angels as role models, as women I could one day be. I didn't ever even think that I couldn't achieve that, that I wouldn't grow up to be a strong, sexy woman.''

``When I was little, we used to play 'Charlie's Angels' a lot,'' adds Liu, 31, who perhaps first accessed some of the formidable willfulness she expresses so well as ``Ally McBeal's'' Ling Woo playing ``Angels'' on the streets of her Queens, N.Y., neighborhood. ``We didn't really watch the series, per se, because we weren't old enough to get the whole thing that was happening. But we knew that there were three beautiful women who were out there challenging people and living this mysterious and wonderful life. It was great.''

``We love the boys that loved 'Charlie's Angels,' '' notes Barrymore, the former child star and Hollywood wild child who was in diapers when the series started. ``But I loved that it depicted women who enjoy their jobs, because that's my ultimate goal in life, and I realize how rare that is. To enjoy that while it's happening is an incredible, incredible, important gift. That these women did that was very important to me.''

Even more important, no doubt, once Barrymore and her Flower Films producing partner Nancy Juvonen signed on with Goldberg to bring ``Angels'' to the big screen.

The movie never seemed to be without difficulties. First, although Barrymore convinced her friend Diaz to join in the fun at an early juncture, finding the third Angel was a long, difficult process. The production seemed to have settled on Thandie Newton late last year, but having just made the not-dissimilar ``Mission: Impossible 2'' and, in the interim, gotten pregnant, the British actress dropped out of the project.

Claiming that their major concern was personality chemistry, Barrymore and Diaz were then drawn to Liu, but she came with another problem.

``It wasn't about the employment or the job opportunity, but about, 'Wow, I can't believe that I've met two people so randomly who got me without having to explain myself,' '' Liu gushes. ``Not everybody gets me, and it was really refreshing. But the trepidation was, how was I going to balance this out with the 'Ally McBeal' schedule.''

``That and, 'Why are they touching me like that?' '' adds Diaz, her fingers once again entangled in Liu's hair.

While the dual work schedule, in some ways, worked to Liu's advantage - she was not required to attend quite as many daylong martial arts training sessions as the other two were - it still proved quite taxing.

``Sometimes I'd get from one set to another and they'd just prop me up and feed me In-N-Out burgers,'' Liu recalls. ``It was really, really fun, but if I thought too much about it, I think I would've gone crazy.''

According to one report that emanated out of the closed set, one day she did. While efforts are now being made to downplay an angry confrontation between Liu and Bill Murray, who is Charlie's lieutenant Bosley in the film, at the time last winter it was said that the argument resulted in the loss of a day's shooting.

At the moment, Liu has only good things to say about Murray (he, however, has been conspicuously missing from the movie's promotional efforts).

``He contributed so much to us by being in the movie,'' Liu says. ``I take my hat off to him; I do, because I think he's incredible.''

Others admit that shooting a big-budget film with an unfinished script and a lot of opinionated, powerful players involved often resulted in that most beloved of Hollywood euphemisms: creative differences.

``The arguments were usually about dialogue,'' explains McG (nee ``Joseph McGinty Nichol''), an award-winning rock video and TV ad director who had the daunting task of bringing ``Angels'' in as his feature filmmaking debut. ``But that's something that was an unnecessary difficulty that goes with not having a script. Here's the thing, though: Bill Murray, the girls, all of us, were very interested in taking the film to its highest place, and that's going to give rise to some spirited conversation. We felt free to, sort of, argue, and I always wanted that kind of passion involved in the film.

``But I don't want to do it again, mind you,'' McG admits. ``I look forward to having a very resolved script and being completely ready the next time I do this thing.''

Whatever conflicts the situation produced, the Angels insist that none of it intruded on their heavenly solidarity. But they didn't want nosey reporters intruding, either, so they kept the set closed and waited until the film was finished before talking to the press about what went on.

``We wanted to make the movie and then give it to you and say, 'OK, this is what it is,' '' Diaz explains. ``Not because we were trying to hide the scratches and the stab wounds that, apparently, were happening on the set. In the experiences I've had in the last five or six years of making films, I think that this one runs alongside the best I've ever had. It was so much fun, and we got to do so many things that people just don't get to do in their lives.''

``The girls got along great,'' McG avows. ``You can see how they're attached at the hip, always playing with each other's hair and finishing each other's sentences. And indeed, they were very giving in that capacity. They let me luxuriate in their fine hair, too.''

However much hair got pulled out in the process of making ``Charlie's Angels,'' most participants now seem satisfied that it was worth it.

``This is a great opportunity to just put forward the idea that you can achieve anything and be any way that you want to be,'' Diaz states. ``These are just three average girls who pushed themselves further, and you see that they are having a good time being sexy and powerful and capable.''

``A movie like this, as simple as it is and as commercial as it is and as fun as it is, speaks miles about where we've come from and where we continue to go and what we have achieved,'' Liu reckons.

``I think it's exciting for any woman to get to be cool,'' Barrymore notes. ``Being Dylan, I jumped out of airplanes, I scuba-dived with sharks, I went on a survival trip for three days, I learned kung fu. ... In that alone, it was one of the greatest years of my life. And I got over many of my fears, as both a producer and a human being.

``I think this opportunity is incredible for any human, let alone young women,'' Barrymore burbles before remembering that she still has producer duties to consider. ``But we made this film for boys, too. I love boys.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) Hark, the CHARLIE'S ANGELS SWING

Cameron, Drew and Lucy take flight as the millennium's answer to Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate

(2) Natalie (Cameron Diaz, top), Alex (Lucy Liu) and Dylan (Drew Barrymore) try to get a glimpse of their elusive boss in ``Charlie's Angels.''