THE AVENGERS
USA. 1998. Director - Jeremiah Chechik, Screenplay - Don MacPherson, Story, Based on the TV Series Created by Sydney Newman, Producers - Jerry Weintraub, Photography - Roger Pratt, Music - Joel McNeely, Avengers Theme by Laurie Johnson, Visual Effects Supervisor - Nick Davis, Digital Effects - Cinesite (Supervisor - Joss Williams), Miniature Effects - The Magic Camera Co (Supervisor - Jose Gravell), Production Design - Stuart Craig, Supervising Art Director - Neil Lamont. Production Company - Warners. Ralph Fiennes (John Steed), Uma Thurman (Dr Emma Peel), Sean Connery (Sir August de Wynter), Jim Broadbent (Mother), Fiona Shaw (Father), Eileen Atkins (Alice), Patrick MacNee (Voice of Colonel Invisible Jones), Eddie Izzard (Bailey)
Plot: John Steed, an agent for The Ministry, is assigned to keep an eye on Emma Peel, a lithe and beautiful meteorologist, suspected of breaking into The Prospero Program - something she denies. Together the two form a partnership to take on the crazed Sir August de Wynter, a Scotsman who has harnessed the Prospero Program and is creating weather havoc to force the nations of the world to each give him ten percent of their GNP.
‘The Avengers' tv series (1962-9) was the height of 1960s chic. It jumped on the vogue for spy films started by the James Bond series but gave it its own surreally droll British manneredness - its two agents engaged in deliberately unreal adventures where they seemed more concerned about the champagne getting above room temperature than they were about imminent danger. The series began less flamboyantly in 1961 as a routine black-and-white policier called ‘Police Surgeon' where Patrick MacNee's Steed was only the sidekick to Ian Hendry's title doctor. But in 1962 MacNee was promoted to the star of the show, the series renamed ‘The Avengers' and the rest is history. The first few seasons which paired MacNee with Honor Blackman (and for about six episodes at the very beginning nightclub singer Venus Smith played by Julie Stevens) were still standard police stories. It wasn't until the arrival of Diana Rigg in 1965 that the series became what it is known for today with the police stories supplanted by a surreal, cartoon universe of mad scientists and British imperturbability and Rigg outfitted in leather bodysuits and mini- skirts, a combination that turned the show into a cult phenomenon. The series was killed off in 1969 with Rigg's departure and her disastrous replacement by Linda Thorson who substituted Rigg's sly flirtatiousness for a vacant airheadedness. The series was briefly revived as the underrated ‘The New Avengers' in 1976-7 with a leggy Joanna Lumley making for a lithe and sexy agent that rivalled Diana Rigg for on-screen class.
‘The Avengers' is now the latest to be revamped in the current fad for big screen revivals of 1960s tv series, following the likes of ‘Mission: Impossible', ‘The Saint', ‘Lost in Space', ‘The Beverly Hillbillies', the ‘Addams Family' movies and the upcoming revivals of ‘The Mod Squad', ‘Bewitched', ‘My Favourite Martian' and ‘Gilligan's Island'. One could sense long in advance that the project was going to be a disaster in the happening. First their was the initial planned castings of Mel Gibson as Steed and Nicole Kidman as Mrs Peel. (Is there really an actor whose persona is less suited to the part of the perfectly mannered gentleman Steed than Gibson ? I was kind of holding out for Charles Dance and Emma Thompson in the parts). And then their was the assignment of Jeremiah Chechik to the director's chair. Chechik made his debut with ‘National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' in 1989 and has yet to make a good film. Chechik's ‘Tall Tale' (1994) was a film about Western legends like Pecos Bill and John Bunyan but fell flat because it seemed scared of and ended up trying to be everything else except a tall tale, while his next, 1996's ‘Diabolique' disastrously tried to remake the classic 1955 French thriller ‘Les Diaboliques' with an upbeat ending. Even ‘The Avengers' distributors could see the film was going to be a disaster before it opened and conducted the almost unprecedented desperation measure of refusing critics any preview screenings on the grounds that "they didn't want the film unfairly compared to the original series". (I do hate to puncture the reality these guys seem to live in but you are selling a remake - you can't revive a tv series and then not expect critics let alone an audience to compare it to the original). And needless to say the film has been pilloried by critics and audiences alike and is already being considered the biggest disaster of the year.
Certainly it is technically a well made film. The photography is lush and sumptuous and there is some fine model effects work and dazzling sets. And the film has certainly done its homework when it comes to studying the series and copying everything from Mrs Peel's costumes to outfitting Steed with his vintage Bentley and steel-capped bowler hat and Mrs Peel with her MGB. It even gets full marks for quoting the series' explanation of what happened to Mr Peel.
But for all that it is really a rather sad film. All the droll British understatement comes far too posed. The jokes about Steed's impeccable coiffure, tea drinking, macaroons and brollies, the unflappable cool in the midst of danger - are all set up as obvious gags. But the effect is less one of droll wit than it is of affected retro-chic - it is like a funny incident that loses its spontaneity in the retelling.
The casting has tried hard but ends up a disaster. Ralph Fiennes tries to do a droll Steed but comes out more like a bland, colourless Oxbridge fop, while Uma Thurman's Mrs Peel is wooden and vapid, lacking in any of Diana Rigg's teasing flirtatiousness. Sean Connery delivers one of the worst performances he has ever given, reduced to slavering and lusting over Uma.
And the plot verges on the completely disjointed. It seems to have been constructed out of sequences that somebody thought was cool - Mrs Peel trapped in an M.C. Escher-modelled house (clearly an echo of the episode ‘The House That Jack Built'), an attack by robot insects, a really daft scene where a group of conspirators meet dressed as teddybears - but these are like incidents that just seem to happen without any connecting sensibility. A clone of Mrs Peel runs about for half the film without even any explanation as to what she's doing there. Even the initial assignment Steed is given has a thorough vagueness to it - he is merely assigned to keep an eye on Mrs Peel and this somehow instantly becomes an investigation into Connery's super-villain. It is sad that the film, for all the technical care that has been clearly lavished on it, can miss the mark so widely when it comes to the fundamentals and above all capturing the panache that made the series so memorable in the first place.
Copyright 1998 Richard Scheib
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