Customer Reviews

The Avengers

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(109)

 

 

As soon as I saw that Ralph Fiennes' head was too small for his bowler, I knew "The Avengers" was going to be a mess. Terribly miscast as superspy John Steed--Fiennes is charmless in the role that Patrick MacNee so ably brought to life on television--he resembles a child wearing his father's hat (and not too happy about it). Uma Thurman fares little better. While she was terrific in both "Kill Bill" films, she's way out of her league looks-wise and charisma-wise when compared to Diana Rigg's simply scrumptious Emma Peel. And then there's the story, or what passes for it, something about a scene-chewing though not particularly convincing Sean Connery controlling the world's weather. Director Jeremiah Chechik and whoever is willing to take the blame for the script get some of the surface details of "The Avengers" formula right but completely miss the boat with regard to the TV series' wit, style, and sophistication, another (typical) modern misstep of focusing on form and ignoring substance. To be fair, a lot apparently was cut from the film before its release, but it's hard to imagine anything salvaging "The Avengers"--and the DVD is sans deleted scenes, so the point is moot. Eddie Izzard pops up looking like a mod, shrunken Oliver Reed but gets the film's best line, though a brief sight gag featuring "Mother," the spy agency boss, also actually made me chuckle with the film and not at it. At least poor Patrick MacNee was smart enough to make sure his cameo did not require him to actually show up on screen; Diana Rigg was smarter for turning the film down outright. Why anyone bothered to remake "The Avengers" is beyond me, as the show worked fine as it was, and I can't think of any actors today who could embody Steed and Peel as well as the originals.

Let me just say that I love all the Avengers from Mrs. Gale to Tara King (for the most part) and I do love the actors of The Avengers movie but this movie stinks. It has nothing to do with the original show. First off Mrs. Peel never dealt with Mother. Mrs. Peel also did not have an on screen affair with Steed either. But Hollywood got it's paws on the story and ruined it. If your a fan of the show then you will hate this movie. I even tried to watch it a second time and just turned it off. This after Wal Mart had it for $5.00 on a discount rack. I should have been free.
Nothing in this movie blends with the real show. Nothing! I only wish that the real Avengers fans had a say with the script before they drove the image in the ground. I bet the script writer never really watched the show in the first place.
Stick with the original Avengers of the 60's. It can never be replicated. At least not in this movie.

I loved the original Avengers series. It was a near flawless program; at least until Diana Rigg left. This film bore little resemblance to that wonderful show. The original Avengers never shied away from the occasional flagrant pun or creating wonderful, almost comic book quality characters. However, in this film, the plot meanders. Ralph Fiennes has no comic ability, and the lovely and talented Uma Thurman pretty much sleepwalks through movie. These is no trace of the quirky style that made the Avengers so special. To those of us who have seen the TV series, it comes as little surprise that several of the original program's directors went on to success in the big screen . I doubt that anyone associated with this film will find that it leads to more career opportunities. The chemistry between Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee was always a delight to watch. Sadly in the film, Fienes looks uncomfortable, and Thurman looks bored.

This is a poorly conceived, uninspired waste of film. The television Avengers' unique character is nowhere to be found in this disaster.

I approached The Avengers with some trepidation, courtesy of several negative reviews, including one Australian critic who proclaimed it the worst movie he had ever seen. Having been one of just 42 people in the cinema when I saw the film, I was wondering just how bad it was going to be. My fears were unfounded. It was entertaining, amusing and suitably peculiar. I say suitably peculiar as, being a fan of the 60's TV series, any deviation from the concept would have been totally unsatisfactory. The movie, set in the sixties, was not a nostalgia trip (something which would have been a distraction) but still managed to capture the essence of that period. The plot was as silly as any in the TV series, thank goodness, and the villain (Sean Connery) was appropriately unbelievable. It wasn't one of Connery's best performances but he obviously enjoyed hamming it up outrageously. You have to enjoy it for that alone. Don't fall into the trap of comparing Uma Thurman and Ralph Feines with Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee. They play their parts differently, not better or worse, just different. The comparison is irrelevant. The cinematography is excellent, as are the special effects. Overall, a highly enjoyable film that should appeal to fans of the genre, and Avengers fan specifically. Not a great movie, but a good production. Its lack of success is unfortunate, and the bad press overdone. It's likely to attain some degree of cult status within a couple of years.

Being a big fan of Uma Thurman, I picked this up the other day on DVD (much to the dismay of my friends) for only $1 at a local pawn shop. I was curious see if the movie still came across as bad to me as it did when I originally saw it theatrically. Did it??? Please continue reading......

On the surface, The Avengers seemed to have all the required ingredients for a surefire summer blockbuster. You had plenty of star power in the form of Sean Connery, Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes. There was a 60 million dollar budget to spend and the movie was based on a 60's cult british secret agent series of the same name that had a dedicated and pretty sizable cult following. You also had Uma Thurman strutting around in an extremely tight leather body suit. Everything seemed initially in place to deliver an updated 90's theatrical version that could have been a cool/fun alternative to the James Bond films. But what ended up in theaters was the biggest bomb of the summer of 1998 (and of the whole year for that matter) and one of the worst films ever released by a major studio.

In its theatrical form, The Avengers was a jumbled, murky and incoherent mess that made hardly any sense no matter how hard you tried to figure out what exactly was going on. My friends and I saw it for free back in 1998 despite the fact that it had not been screened for critics (always a terrible sign) and left the theater with a very bad headache, wondering what in the hell we had just been subjected to. The worst sin that this movie commited was that besides the bizarre teddy-bear costumes (I'll get back to those later on!) this movie isn't even enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level.

The basic plot involves, more or less, an evil madman called Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery) who has built a new weather-controlling device. The British government who has been watching his actions for quite some time. They send two of their secret agents, John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) and Emma Peel (Uma Thurman), to investigate what Sir August is up to and to thwart whatever attempts that he is making for world domination.

After the initial introductions to the two secret agents, they begin to check out Sir August's true plans and wherabouts. The movie quickly turns into a series of badly edited action scenes that fall flat every time and a series of scenes that literally make no sense at all in the grand scheme of things.

A perfect example is when John and Emma are traveling in their souped up car near the beginning (complete with a mini-coffee maker/bar), they are suddenly chased by giant remote control robotic bees. They eventually git rid of the pests, but after exiting their car it explodes for literally no reason at all. One of our first glimpses of Sir August involves a sort of meeting with some people to show off his new weather-control device. For some inexplicable reason, everyone is wearing giant multi-colored teddy-bear costumes! It truly must be seen to believed and if the rest of the movie had been as over-the-top and campy as this scene it would have been entertaining on a purely guilty pleasure level. But unfortunately, the rest of the film has the same flat and lifeless feel to it that the opening scenes exhibit.

There's also a completely unexplained subplot involving a clone of Uma Thurman running around that culminates with the real and fake Uma's batteling it out in a poorly choreographed fight in a very slow moving hot air balloon. Actually, that's this movie's biggest problem. Almost everything that happens seems unfinished and unexplained. There are some huge gaps in logic that will surely have any unsuspecting viewer screaming for someone to cut it off.

I read a while back that the original rough-cut of the movie that was test-screened with disasterous results was a little under 2 1/2 hours. Warner Bros. then demanded that the filmmakers cut the film down considerably, which they grudgingly obliged. The producers stated that the revised cut they turned in came in at 101 minutes with credits and they were actually happy with that cut. But Warner Bros. then proceeded to cut an additional 12 minutes from the film and the result was 89 minutes of terrible action scenes and no plot and logic. Do I think that the original cut would be better? It might certainly make considerably more sense, but the movie would still be awful due to some huge problems.

The acting all around is atrocious. Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. Ralph is stoic and just looks bored. Uma goes through the movie in a variety of tight outfits (including the previously mentioned leather body suit), but her efforts at a believable british accent are laughable. She tries her best but it is very evident that she was not comfortable with her role and the script in any way. The rest of the cast just seems embarassed to be in this movie.

The film will probably gain some sort of cult status based purely on Sean Connery's over-the-top yet terrible performance. I thought that his efforts came across as way too forced and I've always wondered if he did this movie just to pay some back-taxes or a sizable poker debt. He's been in some bad movies before, but he's still managed to turn in a solid performance (Medicine Man and Entrapment for instance). But in this movie, he's just awful in every respect.

Special effects are laughable throughout with some particularly hilarious matte and model work during the film's climax involving a hot air balloon traveling at about 5 miles an hour and some awful CGI tornadoes tearing up an equally bad replica of London. The final battle between Ralph and Sean is also very reminiscent of Highlander 2 for some reason (in terms of how bad it is choreographed and edited).

I'm not sure what Warner Bros. was thinking with this one. But then again, they did the exact same thing with 1999's equally terrible Wild Wild West (which at least made back most of its budget). While I haven't seen many of the original 60's episodes that this was based, it initially seemed that this had some great potential to be a fun little secret-agent/spy movie, but the execution was botched from all angles. It is clear that everyone involved was hoping for an alternative to the James Bond franchise, but this movie immediately squashed any chance of that. The marketing campaign seemed to focus on Uma Thurman in that tight leather body suit, but even that isn't enough to recommend sitting through this migraine inducing disaster.

(On the DVD front, I'm surprised that Warner Bros. didn't include the ton of cut footage from the original version as deleted scenes. It would have really helped to shed some light on what went wrong with this movie. Much to my surprise, there is actually a cult following for this film that have been petitioning Warner Bros. for quite some time to release the original 2 1/2 version, or at the very least the second 101 minute producer's cut. It's scary to think that some people actually liked this movie!)

The Avengers is rated PG-13 and contains violence and language.

This movie is easily on my top-5 list of the worst films I have ever seen. The painful truth of the matter is that I saw this in the theater. What a horrible memory that is! I am a 33-year-old male, and in my entire life I have never wanted to leave the movie-house as badly as I wanted to while watching this pile of rubbish. I have never walked out on any movie, much to my dismay. I should have left during this one. In fact, I remember at least 4 people leaving the theater, never to return. One scene, in particular, haunts me to this very day. There is a complex conspiracy afoot, and the villains all meet one last time before the crime will unfold. They decide to wear disguises to conceal their identities. They are all dressed in giant, multi-colored Teddy Bear costumes!!! What? Yes, you read it correctly. It is so incredibly stupid that I have a hard time retelling it without my lower intestine reaching up and strangling my brain. (Note: that last obscure referrence is from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") Anyway, this film does not deserve a long review, so I will now sign-off. Rent or buy anything else, anything other than this movie. I hope my warning here will save lives......or at least save people from emotional scarring. Take care.

i think it is almost common knowledge by now that this movie was cut to shreds after poor test screenings. A very good opening sequence was cut along with "backstory" scenes that would have ensured that the film made sense. Therefore this version has curiosity value because it shows exactly what happens to a film when a studio panics and decides that a film will exactly fit 90 minutes regardless of how it will affect the story. The directors cut is in the vaults and should be released on DVD now if only to show the fans what the original story was intended to be.

I went to see this movie the week it came out. I liked it a lot. I could have stop smiling and talking about it after I saw it. I also got more intresting in the original T.V show

Sean Connery. Ralph Fiennes. Jim Broadbent. Patrick Macnee. Uma Thurman in a black castsuit. The Avengers. All these elements, mixed together, should equal a summer smash hit. With Patrick Macnee moved to a voice-over, and the style of 'The Avengers' not quite translated onto celluloid properly, the film suffers - but only a bit.

Why critics smacked this film is beyond understanding. It homages several episodes from the original series - where Mrs Peel is trapped on the never-ending staircase, and the whole 'controlling the weather' plot - and maintains the series' level of absurdity without going over the top. Sean Connery in a teddy bear suit? It could have come from an Emma Peel episode.

And yet Ralph Fiennes is a let down. He has no chemistry with Uma Thurman. He tries admirably, but you simply cannot beat Patrick Macnee.

This movie was actually my first exposure to the Avengers, and although it has received mixed reviews, I am perhaps one of the few that enjoy this film.

I do not try to compare the movie with the television series, which is why I think so many people dislike the film.

If anything this is something that is unique and stands on its own much in the same way 'The New Avengers' cannot be compared with the original series.

I will admit that I think the film could've been a little better in parts, I have a feeling that there are many deleted scenes from this film, and this is something that is simply begging for a Director's Cut Special Edition.

Anyway, I think Ralph Fiennes does an exceptional job in the role of John Steed in that he combines the darker parts of who Steed was when the show started with Ian Hendry, with the charm, wit and sophistication on display during the Diana Rigg era. Plus, he looks absolutely smashing with that suit and bowler hat.

Uma Thurman is no Diana Rigg, but does make the role of Emma Peel her own in this film with beauty and grace. And I thought the chemistry between her and Fiennes was excellent.

I think Sean Connery relished playing an over-the-top diabolical mastermind in this film, and you can see that he was just having a ball.

The special effects are awesome, and I think this film could very well be a cult classic, just as long as it isn't compared with the orignal series. The film obviously won't be for everyone, whether or not you're a fan of the show really doesn't factor into whether you'll like it or not.

I just like it for what it is, entertainment.