A crowd of people our age decided to take the couple to see The Avengers in the evening. We caravanned back to Jeff and Mariann's house and opened gifts. One contributor obliged with a massive gift box full of smaller packages of individual flavors, which Jeff proceeded to open and share with the assembled crowd. Jeff and Mariann should get married more often. After a bit, Tom and I got a lift back home with Linda so that we all could change our clothes and meet everyone at the movie.
Avengers is stylish and has a few clever bouts of repartee.
But the fashions and Shakespeare references are too few and far between to make up for the wandering plot, non-sequitur scenes, and mumbling, incomprehensible villain. The opening credits last almost five minutes, presumably because the audience was never expected to sit through the film to the end credits. As for other leading roles, Ralph Fiennes is as good-looking as ever, but his face registers no change of emotion from his initial expression of boredom. Say, Mira Sorvino. The film is chock full of unnecessary scenes, including one particularly unbelivable incident in which De Wynter straps Mrs. Peel into a Hannibal Lecter-like contraption in order to administer hypnosis via a needle that recalls the adrenalin shot scene in Pulp Fiction .