`The Avengers': A No-Screener - And No-Brainer

Movie review X 1/2 "The Avengers," with Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery. Directed by Jeremiah Chechik from a script by Don Macpherson. 91 minutes. Several theaters. "PG" - Parental guidance advised for some violence, language.

To answer the question at hand, yes, "The Avengers" is pretty bad. Not slip-a-disk-running-from-the-theater kind of bad, but a shift-in-your-seat, "oh-for-goodness'-sake-get-on-with-it!" kind of bad.

Warner Bros., the studio that released "The Avengers," has become quite adept at smelling badness reeking from its film prints and decided not to preview the movie for critics. This put "The Avengers" in the truly awful pantheon of no-screeners like "Species 2" and "Major League III." What's worse is the critics were probably the only chance this movie had of finding some favor, because most general audiences will hate it. Hate it.

What critics could have found to like in "Avengers" is its very stilted sense of humor, its offbeat style, Uma Thurman and Thurman's wardrobe.

Thurman plays Mrs. Emma Peel, a scientist who created something called the Prospero project. Prospero, like so many things in this movie, is not really explained, but suffice it to say it deals with the weather.

Not coincidentally, August de Wynter (Sean Connery) also has a weather fixation, and he uses Prospero to control the skies above and extort money from the world. Sent in to stop him is the unflappable John Steed (Ralph Fiennes), who enlists Peel to help him.

Through most of the film, Fiennes looks as though he's waiting in a long license-renewal line at the DMV. His delivery of Steed's lines, peppered with countless double entendres, is at first quaint, then tiresome, then merely perfunctory. He's such a great actor that it's rather like watching an athlete, heavily shackled, trying to do synchronized swimming. Connery plays de Wynter like a madman, but not a very menacing one. Thurman looks good in latex.

There's also absolutely zero suspense in the confrontations. The Avengers' visits to de Wynter's estate are supposed to be fraught with peril, but they're rather like a trip to the next-door neighbors to ask them to turn it down. Most memorable of all, and the real emergency brake to this film, is a board meeting composed entirely of gigantic teddy bears.

Any attempts at satire, surrealism - really, anything that could be conjectured as clever - just don't apply here. The filmmakers seem to be grasping for spy-spoofing, lampooning the genre, but it's just mind-bogglingly dumb. One would have to hark back to "Hudson Hawk" to find a similarly lousy mix of offbeat humor, odd moments and bizarre scenes in a major studio film.

Director Jeremiah Chechick, whom I still haven't forgiven for masticating the remake of "Diabolique," comes off like a poorly coordinated child who can't get a hit in T-ball. Whiff. Whiff. Whiff.

Did I mention the Invisible man yet? No? Patrick Macnee (the original Steed in the '60s television series) is the voice of Colonel Invisible Jones, the real capper on this debacle, who provides plot exposition as an actual Invisible Man in the basement of the Ministry.

In a movie whose title implies vengeance, perhaps Macnee has the best revenge of all. He gets paid for being in the film and doesn't have to show his face.