Dear oh dear, heads will surely roll at Warner Bros. for this lame effort. I used to love the Avengers on TV when I was younger and when I learnt it was going to be turned into a movie by an ideas-starved Hollywood, I couldn't tell whether it was a good idea or not. It seemed promising, with the combined talents of Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sean Connery on show, and the trailer seemed true to the TV series, with Ralph Fiennes' Steed grappling with a psychotic milkman. However, this must be one of the only studio movies in the history not to have gone through the normal process of test screenings, press screenings and premieres. (Warner Bros said this was because they didn't want the movie to be damaged by bad reviews, and wanted people to decide for themselves what it was like. Like, yeah.) Well actually it did have a premiere which the stars failed to turn up for, being apparently involved in new projects around the world. I went to see The Avengers at an advance showing. The auditorium, while not virtually empty, was certainly not full. The movie starts off quite well, with nice computer-generated credits, and then John Steed appears and fights off the milkman, a policeman, and some more ruffians. After this it goes downhill incredibly fast and really scrapes the bottom of the barrel at times. The plot, what there is of it, runs thus: Sir August De Winter (Sean Connery) uses strange machinery, the workings of which is never really explained, to control the weather, and hold the world to ransom. It is up to John Steed and Emma Peel to stop him and his frankly mad accomplices, who include an Emma Peel doppelgänger and a corrupt secret service agent. And that's it. Most martial arts movies have a better plot than that, and the script is not much better.
The worst thing about The Avengers, however is the cardboard characters and the poor quality acting. Uma Thurman is just not very good as Emma Peel, and I can think of a lot of actresses I would rather see in that leather outfit. Sean Connery just sort of stands there and shouts, while Ralph Fiennes, while he looks the part with his immaculate Savile Row suits, hat and stick, might just as well not have appeared at all. Comic Eddie Izzard was completely wasted, and I don't think he even said anything. Jim Broadbent is good however, as always.
I didn't completely hate The Avengers though, as some bits were almost stylish, (the bear outfits, the mechanical bees) and it doesn't quite deserve the lambasting it's had from critics, who I think are upset at not being allowed to see it before the release. But it really is an unrelenting mess of a movie, very nearly achieving "so bad it's good" status.
N.B. Do not watch this if you ever enjoyed the TV series.
(no stars)
written by Ed in August 1998