Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone

I wasn't all that interested in watching this movie, but I decided to anyway since it was one of the only ones that week there that I hadn't seen yet. I should've saw one of the others. I don't even remember what they are now, but it doesn't matter. I am pretty sure that THE AVENGERS is the worst movie of the decade and one of my least favorite movies of all time.

John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) and Emma Peel (Uma Thurman) team up to stop Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery) from destroying the planet with a weather-changing machine. I won't go into the plot too deeply, because it's just plain stupid.

The acting in this movie was not very good. Ralph Fiennes and Fiona Shaw (Father) play two of the most annoying characters in any movies that I have ever seen. The constant unwitty one-liners between Fiennes and Thurman is very annoying. Sean Connery is at his worst here. I was disappointed in him, because he is a great actor who doesn't belong in this movie. Sir August de Wynter? Just the name of the character alone should tell you much.

There was, however, one thing that was good about this movie. That would be Uma Thurman in her tight leather. I am absolutely in love with Uma Thurman, and I don't think she belonged in this film, but I am pretty sure seeing her wearing those catsuits were the only thing that kept me from having to eat my own legs and drink my own urine to survive this movie.

Maybe you'll think I'm exaggerating a bit, but I found this movie to be boring and annoying. I recommend that it be avoided at all costs.

This is among the most panned movies of all time since it was based on a TV show. And while I can understand the fans of the original TV show I still don't think that this movie is THAT bad. I would NEVER put it in the Bottom 100 as I can name many other movies that are much worse than this one (FREDDY GOT FINGERED, THE CAT IN THE HAT and DISASTER MOVIE for example).

In this full length version of the 1960s TV show John Steele and Emma Peel battle with a duplicate Emma Peel and Sir August de Wynter (played by Sean Connery), a mastermind that wants to rule the world with his weather-controlling machine. And while this plot could look stupid to some, it certainly is! But you can't do anything but admire the extraordinary special effects as well the sets. In particular I loved the special effects (the CGI insects were cool to look at). I personally can't give a 1 to a movie with great special effects and sets, it deserves at least other 4 points for the effects.

As for the acting, even though the movie it's bland Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman are good in their roles. And it was a surprise for me seeing Sean Connery in such a nasty role and Patrick Mcnee as the Invisible Jones (a small role).

However, while the movie is a bit bad, it's watchable and far from a huge disappointment. But I am NOT saying it's great!

John Steed is an agent for the Ministry; he is trained to perfection and one of the best despite his belief that the enemies of the past are no longer relevant. When a research laboratory into a weather-based defence system is blown up the main suspect is one Dr Emma Peel, although Dr Peel is adamant that she is innocent. With her being their only lead into the bomb, the Ministry assign Steed to work alongside her and use her to get to the bottom of the mystery – well, after tea anyway.

At the time of release I decided to give this film a miss as I felt I had heard too much of the critics having a field day to really be able to view it with a clear eye. Years later though I decided to give it a go on the basis that each year will see a blockbuster getting a kicking from all critics – sometimes deserved but at other time it is just a poor film that critics jump on it. However by the time I had reached the point where Sean Connery reveals his plan to a bunch of partners dressed as day-glow teddy bears I realised that things were not going to go well. Up till this point I had felt that the film was developing a nice little sense of humour that spoofs the idea of the typically English gentleman spy; however tongue-in-cheek humour is hard to do right and it is very easy to turn the film into a very silly affair that is not so much funny as it is embarrassing.

And so it was with The Avengers, a film that has some reasonable moments but is generally an unengaging and rather silly mess that can only be enjoyed as such. The problem is, this is a very expensive film for one that is just meant to be silly and it really needed to be fun, exciting and enjoyable as well, not just feature some silly points. For me the bear costumes were silly but enjoyable (it is such a weird sight that it stayed with me) but the majority of the rest of the film were just plain silly. The weather plot was poorly done and it never engaged me once.

The cast look good on paper but they are lost in the material and can do little with it. Of course in the case of Connery, it may have helped a little bit if he'd even tried, but he is poor throughout and just looks like a man getting paid. Fiennes is well cast and he is very English, it would have been a good performance had the rest of the film got the tone even half right. Thurman is not an actress I really rate and she has turned in too many average performances recently and here is no exception. Fans may appreciate her squeezed into tight costumes but for me that doesn't come close to covering a very poor performance where she gets it all wrong. Support from Broadbent, Izzard and Macnee sounds like a good prospect but really they have nothing to do and are pretty pointless in reality.

Overall this is not a laughingly terrible film, it is just lacking in any real, consistent value. Some bits are amusing but mostly it is all misjudged with the humour being too silly to work and damaging any dramatic value the film may have had. The actors are mostly poor, thanks to the material and an apparent uncertainty about what they are meant to be doing. It isn't the child of Satan or anything but I would be hard pressed to give you one reason why you should watch this.

Is The Avengers a good film? No. Is it the worst film ever made? No. I first saw the movie at the cinema upon its release and, at that time, I did think that it was one of the worst films I'd seen up to that point. I've watched it 2 or 3 times since then and my opinion of it has improved, well, very slightly at any rate. Apart from a pervading incoherence, I think the film's major problem is its slightness; it's only an hour and a half long and the plot is very simplistic to say the least. It's not hard to imagine audiences feeling a bit short-changed when it first came out, especially as the film was a big-budget, would-be summer blockbuster. Another big problem is the casting of Uma Thurman as Emma Peel. Thurman has shown herself to be a fine actress in movies such as Pulp Fiction but she just looks out of her depth here (I never believed in her as a top-level scientist for a second) and her English accent doesn't sound natural. Nicole Kidman, to whom the role was first offered, would surely have been better, in particular, she's displayed flawless English accents in films such as The Others and The Hours. An English actress I also think would have made a great Peel is Joely Richardson but the studio would probably have vetoed such a choice on the grounds of her not being a big enough name. Ralph Fiennes was a real enigma in this film - there was nothing wrong in principle in casting him as Steed but he looks ill at ease throughout the movie as if he'd rather be elsewhere. I can only assume he'd already twigged that the film was going to be a turkey. What's worse, Fiennes and Thurman have absolutely no chemistry between them, which wastes the snappy dialogue they have with each other throughout the film. The supporting cast fare a bit better with seasoned pros such as Sean Connery, Jim Broadbent and Fiona Shaw making the most of their underdeveloped parts. The retro-chic world of the original TV series is nicely recreated and there's no shortage of nice cars, costumes and locations but what's good about the film is easily drowned out by what's bad; The Avengers is ultimately a shallow, rushed and messy affair, severely hampered by the performances of its two leads. Handled properly, the film could have been a wonderful success for all concerned, the first chapter of an entertaining and lucrative franchise, stretching well beyond the 1990s; instead it's one of the most embarrassing flops of that decade. The original cut of the film was apparently two and a half hours long but, following negative reactions from audiences at test screenings, the studio hacked the film down to its present one and a half hour length. This doesn't actually come as much of a surprise as there is a lack of proper narrative flow to the film suggestive of chunks of explanatory scenes having been cut out. Just one example: towards the end of the film, just before they enter Sir August's underwater lair, Steed and Peel enter a phone box and Peel says "how now brown cow?" down the phone. The phrase seems to be a password to enter the premises but how does Peel know it? There's been talk here and there of the possibility of Warners releasing a director's cut or special edition DVD, restoring the original two and a half hour version. I think this would be a good idea and I'd definitely be interested in watching the full version of the film. It's highly unlikely to be any kind of masterpiece but it's difficult to imagine that it wouldn't improve upon the movie as it stands. At the very least you'd have to assume that it would be more coherent. Sadly I don't think the chances of Warners going down this line are high; I have the feeling that this is a movie the studio would rather forget about than draw attention to.

I am amazed at how well an American film has captured the matter-of-fact surrealism which the mathematician Dodgson(Lewis Carroll)gave to his dream-child, Alice, as also it recalls the more knowing, and oh-so-polite deconstruction wrought by the media-saavy British children of the 60's upon the distressed remnants of England's Imperial aplomb!

Of course, as Oscar Wilde may not have said, Satire revisited is only a lukewarm cup of tea. But then nostalgia - especially when the satire was so gentle anyway - has its own charms. And there was, anyway, a hefty dose of nostalgia amidst the cool insouciance of the original. Its very modernity was made to seem almost an expression of polite insistence on whatever surreal manifestation of tradition was encountered. It was the utterly unruffled mien of the original which prevailed over all lapses from reason and good taste. So, at its best, in the new cinema version.

This is indeed a brave try by Hollywood to draw us back into that black-and-white psychedelia of swinging sixties British commercial television. The sheer madness of the enterprise almost works - if the money-men hadn't had cold feet at the last minute, we might have been enjoying a really remarkable fantasy film. As it is, we must content ourselves with a merely very amusing piece of whimsy. Even through the plot-holes left by a nervous editor we can see some wonderfully mad logic at work: The Escher-inspired architecture of the baddy's stately home, in which Mrs Peel at one point loses her way, encapsulates this whole dream-trip of a movie.

And for those who don't 'get it', I can only say, Humour is like that: Very dependent on individual taste.

But even allowing for taste, it is a sad reflection on public taste that 'The Avengers' overwhelmingly offends filmgoers who are probably quite prepared to accept the ever more overblown superheroes of a more violent tradition, such as 'Batman' or 'The Hulk'. Of course, these two are clearly representative of that particularly adolescent taste for the extreme and crude for which the contemporary Hollywood production-line largely exists. (There is every sign that Eddie Izzard's character was originally intended to satirize mega-buck entertainment and mega-buck villains as being really just spoiled brats with their expensive toys.) The genteel quirks of the English-inspired concept of 'The Avengers' are - in their essence, and however silly - just too irritatingly grown-up for such hyperactive youth ever to endure sitting still for!

A pity the film was not left alone upon release to find its own friends - like a stray cat, that will carefully choose whom it will exercise it's feline charm upon. And what more feline than Uma Thurman in Mrs. Peel's cat-suit?!

This is certainly not the sort of film to toss into an auditorium full of baying first-run morons.

But I suspect that it is a film with more than one life ...