Okay, here's the deal. What is it about this summer, people? El Niño can't take all the blame, you know. I know, the weather's been freaky. It's been hotter than a scalded dog down here, but that's pretty much formula for Georgia summer. But, Texas got dried like beef jerky for a month, then caught like eight straight days of frog-stranglin' rain that flooded everyone out. If it ain't hot, it's raining. If it ain't raining, it's drought. And, now they tell us that El Niño has a little sister, La Niña, that's gonna freeze us to death this winter. Hoo-rah...
Maybe we can blame this summer's movies on El Niño. Everything has been backwards all summer. The big guns have, for the most part, stunk like a possum in a Dumpster, starting with the Taco Smell, and going pretty much right down the line. Armageddon and Private Ryan being notable exceptions, of course, but most of these things have been flashes in the pan for a weekend, then just shrivel up and creep off to the dollar-a-seat places. Not to belabor an issue, but, doesn't that send a distinct message to LaLaLand? It dang sure should...
And the reversal? Things like There's Something About Mary, that very few people had marked as a sure-fire winner, have passed the $100 million mark. The X-Files movie disappointed a bit, but succeeded well enough to guarantee sequel action. Other smaller things have been pretty good, like Mask of Zorroand Out of Sight but they've been dismissed amid the floods of napalm and CGI flair.
Case in point, folks. Remember all the dog-and-pony show going on about The Avengers? J. Peterman was going to sell clothes based on the movie. Uma was everywhere in that leather catsuit (not a bad thing, mind you, but...). Everybody wanted to interview Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee about their classic roles going to the Big Screen. The pot was all stirred up, everything just about to boil.... Then the bottom dropped out of it. TV ads got sparse, the trailers in the "coming attractions," at least where I live, just vanished outright. No more VH1 spots about the fashions. Warning shots? Maybe. But the biggest cannon fired when, suddenly, there was no big world-beating gala premiere for the movie. And, the death knell, suddenly, the studio decided not to allow critics to preview the movie in advance. Flashing caution light, folks, 'cause when this happens, it's a major sign that the studio has absolutely no confidence in a movie, and they do not want a bunch of prerelease slash-and-burn reviews to kill the opening weekend B.O. In other words, sneak it in, cash in what you can, and tiptoe out the back door.
Guess what? There's a reason why the studio had no confidence in this movie. The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Sean Connery, is the victim of the greatest burglary in the history of mankind. Somebody stole the movie. The spirit is gone, the cleverness is gone, and the suave atmosphere is gone. The story is gone. Everything that made the TV show a diamond is gone, and replaced with a paste-up copy, a jangle of rhinestones that flash a little, but just lie there and do nothing.
The plot, such as it is, is pretty simple. John Steed (Fiennes) and Emma Peel (Thurman), secret agents extraordinarie, are out to stop a madman named August de Wynter (Connery). De Wynter has a plan to control the world's weather. This plan will make de Wynter the leader in world domination plans, and he will be the Big Cheese when it comes to making postal workers even nuttier. Steed and Mrs. Peel have to stop this mad scheme, without spilling a drop of their champagne, of course, or mussing their clothes.
That's it, folks. Plain and simple. No big charges here, no slow tension building, nothing. BOOM. Here are the secret agents. Here's the bad guy. Here's the threat to the world. Here's how we're gonna stop him. Roll credits. If this plot sounds familiar to anyone, good. It is stolen, too. Not from some classy thriller, or some Bond-type movie, unless you count a similarity to the first Flint movie with James Coburn. No, no, gentle readers, nothing that slick. This was a plot of an old "Super Friends" cartoon!!! It didn't play out well there, either, but, then again, this was when Superman and Batman were still competing with Wendy, Marvin, and WonderDog for screentime. Later, when the Wonder Twins took over, with those magic rings, you could have sold this plot. Let Zan take the shape of water, fall into the bucket that blue monkey always had with him, and Jana could take the form of an eagle and fly him wherever they needed to go. But, I digress...
If you want to debate wasted efforts, let's go that route. Fiennes, Connery and Thurman. Two Oscar® winners, one nominee, combine their efforts in a showcase of style and substance? Sure-fire good thing, right? Well, yes, if the director, Jeremiah Chechik, had read a book on how to direct actors of quality, how to edit, and how to get a proper script worthy of the talent available at your fingertips. I mean, how many times this summer has there been potential of this caliber wasted due to whatever reason? Fiennes comes across like a grinning Cheshire cat; Connery is a bellowing nutcase, and, obviously, Thurman was hired only to show off clothing, because she does very little acting here. She cocks her hips well, and zips up nicely, but I've seen store mannequins that had more personality than Miss Uma shows for most of this movie. Diana Rigg, we need you!
"The Avengers" TV show had a hip sense of style to it; it never took itself too seriously, and Macnee and Rigg always looked like they were having fun, no matter what the threat to humanity. Can it be that Mike Myers did the real remake of "The Avengers" with Austin Powers, and nobody noticed? Apparently so, because Myers had some fun with the "hip" atmosphere, the attempts at ultra-suave style, and, for the most part, he wore Diana Rigg's clothes. Notice what Elizabeth Hurley is wearing in the final showdown sequence at Dr. Evil's HQ? Diana Rigg's wardrobe. The catsuit, complete with zippers and curves and more curves. Remember Austin's first partner's name? Mrs. Kensington. Similarity to Mrs. Peel? You be the judge.
There's little excuse for this disappointment of a movie. I can only assume that there was a lot of tinkering with this thing after it was in the can, because, if this is the product as envisioned by screenwriter Don MacPherson, somebody should've run in with a butterfly net and snagged him off the set before he cashed his first check. Warner Brothers' attempts to squelch the evidence just confirmed that fact that they knew this was going to be a black-flag toe-stumper in the race for the summer dollars. (And this is from the studio whose recent track record reads like its own disaster relief fund application: Father's Day, Batman & Robin, The Postman, Steel.) They knew what they were about to release, and they could do nothing else about it, so they just slammed the door on the publicity train, and let this movie run the race alone, no pit crew, no cheering from the stands, nothing. The few times this movie does show signs of like, all the fight gets beaten out of it with cricket bats. Sad, but true....
If it sounds like I'm being too hard on this movie...tough! It deserves to be flogged mercilessly. It is yet another attempt to blind us, the moviegoers, into believing there's no need for substance if there's enough flash. It's the worst kind of filmmaking: the Schumacher kind. I know, the Anti-Welles had nothing to do with The Avengers, but it's that kind of no soul/no substance moviemaking that's making it harder and harder to pay our hard-earned cash to watch flickers in the dark.
If you just have this incredible jones to burn some bucks, go pay to see The Avengers. But you better hurry, folks. It'll be on Cinemax before you can say The Saint, sandwiched between showings of Godzilla and Batman and Robin Better yet, just take your money and mail it directly to the local water treatment plant near you. At least there, they're used to dealing with this kind of crap.
Image copyright Warner Bros.
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dead on arrival