The Avengers (1998)

zero stars
This review is for the 1998 film based on the British T.V. show and not for the Marvel series.

If I were to come up with a new way to market The Avengers, I'd say put copies of the movie in the pharmacy next to the sleeping pills. This disastrous film would probably make more money that way than it did in the theaters. I woke up on a Friday morning after a good night's sleep, and a trip to the movies sounded like a great idea. After halfway through The Avengers, I was ready for a nap.

The Avengers is another example of a television show spawning an inferior movie. This is by far the worst one yet. Yes, it's worse than The Beverly Hillbillies. I have never seen the series, though I hear it is an enjoyable spy program featuring hip characters and wonderful chemistry between Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. This '90s version stars Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman as John Steed and Emma Peel, two secret agents for what is simply known as The Ministry. My only guess as to why they're not working for Her Majesty's Secret Service is because MI6 turned down their job applications.

John and Emma team up to stop Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery) from blackmailing the world with his weather device known as Project Prospero. Unless he's paid an absurd amount of money, he will freeze the world. His hideout is an enormous mansion with twisted corridors that look like David Bowie's fortress in Labyrinth. John and Emma negotiate this hideout with little luck, but that's not the only thing stopping them. An Emma Peel look-alike is running around, framing the real Emma for breaking into her own laboratory.

The Avengers is a film replete with bad action and terrible plotting. There are many ridiculous scenes. August de Wynter holds a meeting with several high-profile scientists, all dressed in bear costumes to conceal each other's identity. Surely blindfolds are cheaper. Giant mechanical bees attack John and Emma with machine guns. In the most inexplicable development, John visits an invisible man in The Ministry's basement.

Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman display no chemistry whatsoever, but that didn't bug me as much as the witless action and dialogue. There's no flair or excitement, and when characters engage in combat, they utter insane dialogue in some attempt to add humor to the situation. It would help if what they said was actually funny in the first place. Jeremiah Chechik directs the movie as a series of conflicts interrupted by weak exposition.

The film performed poorly for an advanced screening, and the studio had it cut down from two hours to a standard 95-minute running time. I doubt anything valuable was left out, because what remains is so boring and uninspired that this is one of the few times I went to a movie full of energy and walked out exhausted.

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