Warner Bros., Rated PG-13
Directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik
Written by Don MacPherson
I really wanted to like The Avengers. A lot. I had been looking forward to it for quite a while. But first of all, the buzz wasn't all that great, but I'm wary of buzz. Then Warner Bros. pulled the screenings for critics and I started to get worried. Could this movie really be that bad? Well, the good news is, it's not that bad. The bad news is, it could have been so much better. From what I know of "The Avengers," (which isn't a lot) it was one of the best television series of the '60s if not all time. I plan to see some of the old episodes on video very soon to see what the exact differences were between this and the movie. The only chance I got to see it was when it was on A&E and I only saw bits and pieces. But this movie rarely approached anything close to the greatness of what I've heard about the show.
What was wrong: The pacing was far too fast. The audience was left playing catch up with the plot. I've heard people saying there were plot holes, but if you pay attention, it's all explained, which brings me to another problem. There's not a great plot to begin with. The story, about a madman (Sean Connery) trying to take over the world by using the weather was only good enough for a one hour episode of a show, tops. It had "movie-plot" potential, but none of this seemed to be taken advantage of. Connery was rarely threatening. How he got in this movie, I'll never know.
Now, what was right (or at least okay): Ralph Fiennes, as usual, pulls off a nice performance, playing agent John Steed with much reserve. Some people say he wasn't close enough to Steed on the show, but let's be realistic here, that rarely happens. Uma Thurman seems to be doing a variation on Poison Ivy here, but she works most of the time. But from what I know of the show, she is no Diana Rigg, who originally portrayed her character of Emma Peel, but I never expected her to be. Thurman can act, but she really hasn't had an outstanding performance since Pulp Fiction. But she pulled it off by the skin of her teeth here. The chemistry between Fiennes and herself is curiously great, seeing that neither one of them seemed to be giving it 100%. The dialogue that helps their chemistry along a lot is quite amusing. I've seen better but I did enjoy it. If I tried to keep a tally of the number of references and puns, I would probably give up after the first 20 minutes, but I for one like that kind of dialogue, especially in a film like this (not in any Batman flick, though). Where this film truly and undeniably succeeds, though, is in the areas of art direction and costume design. They are nothing short of superb, and fit the film perfectly. The gadgets (it's a spy movie, they need gadgets) are definitely cool, though their could've been more of them. In fact, there could've been more of almost everything. The movie is far too short, and there is at least one scene from the trailer that was cut out, but leaving it in probably would've helped. People going in cold will probably be terribly disappointed if they expect an action film. It's very British, which will probably make it a failure here in the states. For those of us who get it, it's still a slight disappointment, being the very definition of style over substance. **
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