The British TV show The Avengers was already a camp artifact when
it started airing stateside in the mid-1960s. The movie version accurately
preserves its arch, slightly musty silliness--which makes it about as tasty
as a petrified teacake. In this listless latest attempt to milk cathode-ray
nostalgia, unflappable superspy John Steed teams with swashbuckling
scientist Emma Peel to defeat Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery), a mad
meteorologist who vows to unleash killer storms on the world unless his
demands are met.
Such a vehicle cries out for stars to carry the show, and two step
forward: costumer Anthony Powell, who strikes a perfect balance between
Savile Row suavity and Carnaby Street mod; and production designer Stuart
Craig, who ransacks every source from Escher to Jules Verne and devises
wonderfully fanciful sets and gadgets--giant floating globes, trompe l'oeil
staircases. Even the supporting players have style, especially Eileen
Atkins as an operative with a motherly way of wielding a submachine
gun.
However, in Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman, the filmmakers seem to have
found the only two people in the world who never thought it would be fun to
be John Steed and Emma Peel. They're overqualified in every way, except for
the ability to walk through this lunacy with blithe confidence. Fiennes
looks pained and distracted, as if he were experiencing an embarrassing
itch just below the frame, and he's graceless in the big action sequences.
Thurman, who could play Emma Peel just by showing up, doesn't show up.
Not that you can blame either one of them. Alongside the movie's feeble
displays of verbal wit, your average playground loudmouth sparkles like Joe
Orton, and the script's idea of local color is having everyone sip tea.
(Thank God screenwriter Don Macpherson didn't write Braveheart, or
the screen would be awash in haggis.) The problem, which Fiennes and
Thurman must've guessed long before the shoot was over, is that there's
simply no reason for this movie to exist. The TV shows of our youth were
engaging precisely because they were so ephemeral; now they're being
dredged up, recycled, and imposed upon another generation, as if to
establish the hegemony of baby-boomer crap. Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman,
Sean Connery et al. have better things to do with their time. So do
you.
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