#86 The Avengers (Wes)

The Avengers

For the third time now we come to a movie that I’ve actively avoided since it’s release. There are two reasons for this. Firstly when it was released, the studios didn’t show it to the press, so there were no reviews, which is always a sign that the studio know they have a stinker on their hands. Secondly, I never really liked the TV show that this was based on, so it’s never had much appeal for me. I was right to avoid Speed 2, but missed out on something fun in avoiding Street Fighter, so was I wrong to give this film a miss?

Based on the British TV show from the 60s (definitely not to be confused with the Marvel Comics superhero team), The Avengers follows secret agents John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) and Emma Peel (Uma Thurman) as they fight to defeat Sir August De Wynter (Sean Connery) from unleashing his weather machine on Britain. There’s some nonsense about a cloned Emma Peel and some double crossing agents, in there as well, but I think that one sentence sums up everything you need to know about the plot.

Movies based on TV shows are generally either pretty good, or horrifyingly bad. I thought Starsky and Hutch, The Addams Family and The Brady Bunch were great fun. However I also thought that The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, The Flintstones and Star Trek: The Motion Picture were bloody awful (to be fair though, the Star Trek films mostly improved vastly after the first one). Mainly though, I’ve just avoided seeing most adaptations, as I just can’t bear to see how badly Hollywood has mangled the next show it set it’s eyes on: The A-Team, Yogi Bear, The Smurfs, The Saint… The list for those ones just goes on and on.

The Avengers goes beyond horrifyingly bad though. It sets itself a whole new level of cringeworthy as it tries to be as British as possible, but instead makes Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins look as British as a Devonshire cream tea. The most British this film gets, is right at the beginning when John Steed is walking through a village and he gets attacked by everyone he sees (A policeman, a milkman, some mechanics, an old lady with a pram). Swap a country village for an Essex coastal town and you’re pretty much there.

Unfortunately, whilst the original TV show did have a very British sense of humour, laden with British eccentricity and dry wit, this movies attempts at it are about as convincing as Keanu Reeves English accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The eccentricity in this movie seems to stretch as far as Steed having a gadget in his Bentley that dispenses tea. That’s right, he basically has a Teasmade in his car. How very wacky. As for the dry wit, well let’s just say that hardly needed to sew my arse back on after laughing it off.

Like the TV show, this movie does try to be absurd, but once again it just hits the wrong level. The most bizarre scene involves Sir Wynter hosting a meeting of criminals where everyone is dressed in giant teddy bear suits. (It has to be seen to be believed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HW0j13EvTg). It’s like if The Untouchables was based in Build-a-Bear. Whilst this scene is a mixture of awkward and baffling, it does lead to a scene with Uma Thurman fighting a giant teddy bear who turns out to be a clone of herself, what other film can boast that?

There are actually a few really good scenes in this film. The old lady spy, Alice (Eileen Atkins), shooting Shaun Ryder and scaring off Eddie Izzard made me laugh and I particularly liked the part where a drugged Emma Peel gets caught in an M.C. Escher nightmare maze, complete with never ending staircase. Unfortunately by this part of the movie, I felt I was trapped in a similar maze and that this film would never end.

The most inexplicable thing about this film is how it attracted such a brilliant cast, most of whom put in some of the worst performances I’ve ever seen them give. Surely it's standard practice to read the script before you agree to make a movie? Ralph Fiennes, brilliant years before in Schindlers List, just appears foppish and a little embarrassed. Uma Thurman seems to be concentrating so much on maintaining her pretty poor English accent that she forgot to act, and for some reason Sean Connery seems to be doing the same Spanish accent that he did in Highlander 2...

You could blame some of the terrible performances on the terrible script, but not everybody comes out looking bad. Jim Broadbent as Mother puts in a typically good performance and Patrick Macnee’s cameo (voice only) as Invisible Jones is entertaining. In fact most of the supporting cast are actually ok, I think it was probably just poor casting in the case of the lead roles.

Ultimately the worst thing about this movie is that it’s boring. An action adventure movie, that’s clearly supposed to appeal to a family audience, should be exciting. It doesn’t all have to be all action, but it has to be engaging. I think the best thing the filmmakers could do with this movie is market it as a miracle cure for insomnia, they could perhaps then make up some of the money this movie lost at the box office.

Director, Jeremiah Chechik was forced to cut 26 minutes from the movie after a negative test screening. A directors cut may make the plot make more sense and fill in some of the gaping plot holes, but I think that would more likely just be prolonging the torture of any poor soul who thought this film would be a worthwhile time to spend an evening watching.

The Avengers is a lot like walking in on your parents having sex. It’s horribly embarrassing for everybody involved, and you just want to forget everything you’ve just witnessed. Do yourselves a favour and stick to the other movie called The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble in the UK) you won’t regret it.