The Avengers

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Izzard
Directed by: Jeremiah S. Chechik
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure
1998

Times Seen:
Tim: 2

Summary: John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) and Dr. Emma Peel (Uma Thurman) try to stop an evil genius (Sean Connery) trying to use the weather to control the world.

Review:

Tim: The Avengers is a giant mess of a movie. It was hastily cut down from its original 115 minute length, which certainly didn't help matters. The whole movie feels disjointed, confusing, and overall, quite bad. I am honestly not sure what happened with this movie, but whatever it was, it ruined any potential it might have had. The plot is ridiculous and oftentimes boring, and nothing really seems to make sense. There's little else to say, except that this movie is a massive failure.

The script has to be pretty terrible. A lot of things happen in the movie, but nothing of real importance ever seems to occur. We have the witty back-and-forth banter between John Steed and Emma Peel, but this quickly gets tiresome. There is a plot about an evil scientist using weather to destroy cities, but this is full of plot holes. The movie oftentimes creates sheer boredom.

The cast doesn't have much to work with, so its not surprising that they aren't very good. I really like Ralph Fiennes, but his John Steed is a smug, detached, boring character. There was just very, very little to like about his peformance. Uma Thurman is not much better. She delivers all her lines with that same, boring, penetrating glance. I don't think she was very good at all, and the ridiculous dialogue she was expected to deliver did not help. I suppose and Fiennes work well enough together, but there isn't a great deal of chemistry. As I mentioned, their flirtatious back-and-forth gets old very quickly.

Sean Connery was not in good form here. He is way too over-the-top, in a role that was much bigger than it should have been. He seems like a silly, comic book villain, rather than a flesh and blood one. I never really understood what his motivation was, other than the impossibly boring "money and power" desires. He was a very weak villain.

There are a few decent moments. I suppose the opening scene with Fiennes is decent. I like the absurd "How now, brown cow?" line, and the walking-on-water scene was cool, too. However, these decent moments are stuck in the middle of some absurdly awful moments.

Not every movie works out as it was envisioned, and The Avengers represents a failure of a massively epic scale. I really, really did not like this movie at all. It disappointed on nearly every single level. This is a bad, bad movie.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 4



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Kill Bill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen