conventional wisdom among collectibles retailers is that children 's items begin to dramatically escalate in price about twenty - five or thirty years after the item was made .
that 's when the kids of that time have jobs , disposable income and a desire to re - visit the awe and wonderment of childhood that has disappeared from their lives .
check out the prices of toys from the late sixties and you 'll find that yogi bear lunch boxes are demanding big bucks .
there 's a heavy nostalgia nowadays for the late sixties and early seventies and nowhere is it more apparent than on the big screen .
boomers are now mostly in their forties and fifties and have lived in the work - a - day world for a long time .
they 'd like to re - capture some of that fun they remember from days of yore .
hollywood seems more than eager to churn out product to help them .
directors are zealous to put their stamp on icons from that time .
and for the most part they 're messing it up .
" mission impossible " , " lost in space " , " godzilla " , " zorro " .
none of these successfully capture the originals .
none of these are even good films .
you can now add " the avengers " to the list .
the british television series began in 1961 .
super secret agent john steed ( then - patrick macnee ) and his third partner , emma peel ( then - diana rigg ) are the pair that the american audience fell for .
surrealistic and witty , the series fit the mood of the times .
the leather - clad rigg probably did n't hurt the ratings either .
after all it 's not a coincidence that you ca n't pronounce her character 's name without " appeal " .
now we 're in the nineties .
steed
( now - ralph fiennes ) and peel ( now - uma thurman ) are battling evil genius sir august de wynter ( sean connery ) who is screwing with england 's weather .
that 's about as much of a plot as we have .
there 's some footage about a lot of other things that either do n't make sense or make even less sense
.
we get betrayal for some unknown reason .
evil clones appear and vanish and have no connection to the film
. remarkably ineffective giant flying robot wasps with machine guns in their belly come from nowhere for no good reason .
there 's a high tech hot air balloon , but i have no idea why anyone 's in it .
the spy agency is run by a man called " mother " who is in a wheelchair and a woman named " father " who is blind . . . at least in some scenes .
there 's probably a reason for all of this , but we 'll never know it
.
macnee makes an appearance of sorts .
he is the voice for an invisible man whose character goes nowhere in a scene that does nothing .
a group of villains sits around a table , all clad in huge pastel - colored teddy bear outfits .
at first it 's humorous to watch the teddies waddle around , but
then it becomes goofy .
the movie is a medley of clutter , confusion and wrong decisions around every corner .
it feels like major portions of the film are missing .
the storyline jumps rather than flows .
reportedly the film was re - cut several times .
this is one of those times where the whole is less than the sum of the parts especially since some of the parts appear to be missing .
there 's one good point where peel is running from one room to another in a house designed by escher .
other than that ,
the effects are second - rate .
the weather threat is old hat as are the scenes of huge tornadoes .
thurman almost makes an adequate emma peel but it does n't work .
she looks good , dresses in all the right fetish outfits
but there 's no spark .
fiennes fares even less well
.
macnee 's steed was a witty man of the world with a sense of humor .
fiennes ' agent comes across as a dour kid in grown - up clothes who has never been out of his home town .
even connery , one of the greatest living actors , does n't have much of a presence outside of a few fiery scenes .
the action scenes are difficult to follow .
director jeremiah chechik ( responsible for the atrocious remake of " diabolique " ) somehow manages to put the camera exactly where it should n't be .
things happen , people move around , but even if , with the utmost effort , you were able to care about any of it , the scenes are bewildering .
the primary allure of the original was the interaction between the two leads .
witty banter and an underplayed sexual tension were a winning combination .
admittedly there are a few humorous sexual puns in the film , but there 's no chemistry and the repartee is anything but clever .
one of emma peel 's first lines of dialog is " rules are made to be broken .
"
it does n't get any better .
advance word alone should have been enough to scare off anyone .
the release date was changed several times .
connery refuses to promote the film .
there was no screening for critics which may have been a good choice for warner brothers .
at least this way , they get something of an audience for the first weekend before the news gets out .
admittedly i have n't seen an episode of the television series for a couple of decades .
my guess is that it would be severely dated now .
no matter how antiquated it might be , there 's no doubt that it holds up better than this film is at first viewing .
there 's no reason to waste any part of the last few days of summer inside watching this movie .
no reason at all .
Output: N