The Avengers (Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman) no gummy bears
If you want to build up a strong immunity against good movies, if you are looking to poison your palette beyond comprehension, if you want to torture an innocent bystander far beyond any tortures currently known to exist, may I suggest The Avengers, a dreadfully awful mess in so many, many ways. If the Avengers were a book, it wouldn't be good enough to be an Archie comic. If it were music, it wouldn't even be an 8 track recording by Wayne Newton. And if it were good enough to be called a film, it wouldn't even rise to the haute couture level of Tom Green or Adam Sandler. Indeed, watching it is an exercise in tolerance.
When I think back on it, words escape me. No, they don't. That would be letting The Avengers off too easy, something I could never live with. No, it is my obligation to describe how bad it is, and it is an obligation I will tackle head on.
For some unfathomable reason, it stars Ralph Fiennes and Sean Connery, multi-Academy Award nominees who must have been hypnotized throughout the production shoot; it's the only valid reason I can devise for them appearing in the project. Along with Uma Thurman, they exchange approximately 200 barbs and puns throughout the movie, and not one of these is funny. I mean, I love a pun as much as the next guy, but I didn't even smile at a single joke. They were awful. Beyond awful. I was full of awe, that's how awful they were.
Now, I never watched the original television series, but in my opinion the premise just doesn't translate very well to present times. Fiennes is supposed to be the hero, but he carries an umbrella around with him throughout the whole movie. Not in one or two scenes, but the whole movie. He looks like an idiot. Then there's the antagonist, Connery. In one scene, he wears a giant teddy bear costume. In another, he's wearing a kilt. Oh, did I mention his Evil Plot? He's going to "control the weather". Ooooh, somebody stop him! He's so dangerous!
Some other reasons why it ranks so high on the Rank-o-meter: in one scene, Uma and Ralph are pursued by computer-generated, mechanical insects. In another, we see an invisible informant (I'm guessing it's because the actor later asked to be digitally wiped out of the movie once he saw the finished product). There is a man called Mother and a woman called Father. The closing credits theme song is sung by Grace Jones. The characters all drink tea every 5 minutes. And on. And on.
The editing is atrocious, it cuts from one scene to halfway through another one without any narrative or explanation. The actors spend most of the time looking as confused as the audience is. The pièce de resistance? The Avengers concludes with a character dangling from a catwalk, and another character meets their timely demise by getting struck by lightning. I am not making this up. This is easily one of the worse movies I have ever seen. Easily.
