*The Avengers* (1998, PG-13)
Directed by Jerimah S. Chechick (Diabolique)
Written by Don MacPherson
Starring: Ralph Finnes (The English Patient), Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction), Sean Connery (The Rock)
As Reviewed by James Brundage
There's a little kid in all of us. My little kid is kept under triple locks with a contingent of Marine guards with Bowie's, .45's, and M-16's outside. Dressed in a straight jacket, banging itself against the padded walls of the back of my mind, it has a desperate little voice screaming to be released. To have fun, to wreak havoc with swordplay and find a friend to play cowboys and Indians with. My inner child recent found a cohort to free it, and a friend to play with, in the new release The Avengers.
Based upon a sixties TV, book, and film series (like last year's boring The Saint), The Avengers is a spy film with a twist-- It goes for the gut of the other spy films. I went into the theatre, and I wasn't looking for something intelligent. I wasn't looking for something smartly scripted or original. I wasn't even looking for something that has less cheese than a Green Bay fan in January. No. I was looking for fun. And fun was what I received.
The Avengers is a spy movie that has a psychotic lemon twist and a cherry on top, leaving you a bit shaken AND stirred by the rough 90 minutes of havoc-wreaking fun. To surmise a plot in the regular equation style: Bad Guy (Sean Connery), steals the machine of Sexy Scientist (Uma Thurman), which, by the way, can control the weather, and Secret Agent (Ralph Finnes) has to get it back. Oh, yeah, did I mention we've got a backdrop cast of characters who leave you laughing by their names alone (i.e. Mother, the handicapped man in charge of the super-secret agency "The Ministry", and his blind female counterpart "Father").
Stick in a few action scenes and you've got your core audience hooked. But the thing is, it takes you on a wild ride not with its action, which it delivers in semi-modest quantities, but in its psychotic, surreal humor. Ranging from evil villains dressed in teddy bear suits to helicopter bugs half the size of a Volvo with machine guns and missile launchers, the events rival the oddball characters in their bittersweet fun. It's cheese, but, thank God, it's different cheese.
http://fly.to/criticsheaven
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