THE AVENGERS (Warner Brothers) The ill-advised decision by Warner Brothers not to screen "The Avengers" for critics prior to its release has led to rampant speculation on exactly how bad the $80 million film must be. At the same time, the numerous clips from the movie in the HBO "First Look: The Avengers" special that's been airing for the past couple of weeks make the picture appear pretty intriguing, and the allure of Ralph Fiennes in a Saville Row wardrobe and Uma Thurman poured into a leather catsuit is pretty potent in and of itself. So what's the verdict? Well, suffice to say there have certainly been much worse films screened this week: "The Avengers" is certainly easier to sit through than "Air Bud 2: Golden Receiver." Early reports hinting that WB cut out crucial scenes in a last-ditch effort to make this wildly offbeat spectacle palatable to the masses appear to be true -- the film plays like some sort of feverish hallucination with no real logic or continuity. A mess "The Avengers" may be, but it's infinitely more interesting and imaginative than such numbing crowdpleasers as "Armageddon" and "Lethal Weapon 4." Don Macpherson's screenplay emphasizes style over story to such a point that you'll be hard-pressed at the end of the movie to recall exactly how it all began. Still there are some mighty amusing moments along the way, including a wonderful sequence set in a maze of marble halls and stairways, a chase scene involving a fleet of robotic killer bees, the gorgeously dark image of Fiennes and Thurman moving serenely across a river inside giant plastic bubbles, and your only chance this week to see Thurman attacked by a giant teddy bear. The chemistry between Fiennes (as the relentlessly dapper secret agent John Steed) and Thurman (as both Dr. Emma Peel and her malevolent, silent clone) never quite reaches the boiling point, although the pair seem to enjoy bouncing Macpherson's quirky dialogue off of each other and both stars look simply smashing throughout. As Sir August DeWynter, the villain of the piece, Sean Connery fares somewhat less well. Not only does he have very little to do -- his role appears to have been truncated somewhere along the line -- but he seems uncertain of exactly how to play the few scenes he's in. It looks like Connery was on his way to camp it up like a "Batman" baddie and director Jeremiah Chechik toned him down. Better to have allowed the actor to follow his instincts; if anyone should be given leeway to go over the top, it's someone portraying a madman plotting to blackmail the nations of the world with a weather-controlling device. Aside from its defiantly oddball sets, characters and situations, "The Avengers" sets itself apart from the summer-blockbuster herd by striving for an intentionally artificial look that calls to mind the cheapish TV show. For example, the special effects make no attempt to convince you that that's really a twister in the middle of the Thames River or that the sudden blizzard enveloping London actually came from the sky. Instead these visuals simply say, "Of course this is fakery, just like everything else you're looking at," and it's hard not to be charmed on a certain level. "The Avengers" is flawed on any number of levels and will almost certainly prove to be a box-office disaster, but if approached with an open mind and suspended disbelief it has its share of small delights. James Sanford
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