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.
Some times it works sometimes we get The Avengers
In the hit or miss business called "show" and the utter lack of ideas that are being pitched to movie studios lately it was only a matter of time till "they" got their "greedy little hands" on a terrific classic TV show "The Avengers" John Steed and Emma Peel, clever scripts, plus the unrequited sexual tension between the two characters, a gem. Ralph Finnes is so blah I wonder why he's a movie star at all.
Oh, my god, this was awful!
I can't believe I watched the whole thing. All these talented people can't save a script (was there one?) that sucks this bad. Connery was unbelievable from his first scene and totally miscast. Eddie Izzard is one of the funniest people alive, but if you are a fan of any actor in the cast, SKIP THIS FILM!
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Previously filmed in 1933 (as Island of Lost Souls) and 1977, the classic H.G. Wells story was filmed again for this graphic 1996 version. The film was roasted by critics, but it's an utterly fascinating failure, largely due to the performances of David Thewlis, Val Kilmer, and especially Marlon Brando in the title role as a mad (and in this case outrageously bizarre) scientist whose experiments in crossbreeding humans with animals have gone terribly awry. Thewlis plays the wayward scholar who is rescued at sea by Kilmer and brought to Moreau's island to discover the doctor's unnatural "children." Fairuza Balk plays Moreau's half-cat daughter, but it's Brando and Kilmer (in one scene doing a killer Brando impersonation) who steal the show, along with the astounding makeup effects... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): David Thewlis - Marlon Brando - Val Kilmer Director(s): Richard Stanley - John Frankenheimer DVD Release Date: Released the 28 August 1997 Usually ships in 24 hours
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