Jeepers! How absolutely post-modern! Sean Connery as a James Bond baddie! Connery, with henchmen Eddie Izzard and Sean Ryder, take on the forces of Fienness Steed and Thurmans Peel. And everyone seems to hate it. Overproduced, overplayed and painfully stilted. The most obvious trouble is the bad casting [...] Disappointingly, Chechniks film can only stagger more deeply into incoherence, said The Independent on Sunday on August 16th.
And the film isnt all that good. There are far too many things going on in a jumbled script. Steeds first meeting with Peel is laboured and unnecessary - why does Hollywood always insist on these ineffectual backstories? In fact, it messes up other bits of the story: for the Peel clone to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the original Emma, Steed and Mother would have to know and implicitly trust her already. The introduction of the blind Father, and her betrayal of our heroes, was predictable and crap.
But the main problem was the tone of the film. The producers seem undecided about whether theyre celebrating the over-the-top Swinging 60s London scene, like the beginning of Austin Powers, or making a grittily-real 90s update of old TV, in the vein of the Saint and Mission: Impossible flicks. Thurman, Fiennes and Connerys efforts at elegante and refined just look wooden in this grittily-real world.
Unforgivably, Mrs Peel sweats, looks scared and has her hair out-of-place when fighting baddies. She and Steed were always casual, unworried and ever-so-cool cats.
When it gets the tone right, however, the film is magic. Eddie Izzard steals the show as the nicely menacing Bailey, while Connerys board meeting of multi-coloured teddy bears - followed by the chase with said bears around the dizzying architecture of the Lloyds Building - was fantastic. Connery, lets face it, has made something of a career saving crap genre films from total despair.
Its weird that Connery has such a huge cult status. After all the gumph about him in Trainspotting, he turned down both the role of God in A Life Less Ordinary, and of Eliot Carver, villain in the latest Bond flick, Tomorrow Never Dies. Which is why its weird hes accepted The Avengers role. I mean, theres this Curse of The Avengers, where those whove starred in it are then resigned to playing mere parodies of themselves.
Well, okay, not all. Ian Hendry left the series for obscurity, even appearing in an episode of The New Avengers as a different character! Nobody remembers Venus Smith, so I can get away with knowing bugger all about her, and the less said about Gareth Hunt tossing his beans for Nescafe the better. But otherwise...
Take Honor Blackman. First tough, equal-to-any-man Avenger, back in the early days of The Avengers TV series. Having appeared - with Connery - in Bond flick Goldfinger as the hard-arsed lady only 007 can conquer, shes reduced to playing a mad old lady in sitcom The Upper Hand. In a sitcom that plays with gender stereotypes, her independence is something for us all to have a laugh at.
Joanna Lumley, as everyone knows, was only able to resurrect her career by playing Patsy in Ab Fab. "Sapphire and Steel may be relevant", my editors remind me at this point. And it probably is. Paired up with one-time boy from UNCLE, David MacCallum, its like an attempt to do telefantasy seriously. I think. It may well have been a pastiche itself. Bloody series was so unintelligible Ive no idea...
Still, my editors were the ones to also remind me of Lumleys self-parodic appearances on Ruby Waxs show which lead directly to Ab Fab. And she still has the resourcefulness of an Avengers girl, with her infamous ability to make a pair of shoes from a bra. I wonder how Valerie Singleton would have fared as an Avenger?
Lets face it, Lumley never quite cut the mustard as an Avengers girl anyway. Not after wed seen Diana Rigg. Oh, but then who could? In fact, Lumley and Diana Rigg were in the same Bond film: On Her Majestys Secret Service. But while Lumley is just one of the nameless background totty, pouting at 007, Rigg not only shags him, she bloody well marries him too! Its just a shame she gets lumbered with Lazenby rather than Our Sean. Being shot at the end of the film was probably a lucky escape.
Diana Rigg may have escaped the parodies, but the only way shes been able to work is playing evil witches in serious dramas like Motherlove and Rebecca (the remake). The most intelligent, beautiful and wonderful of cult TVs women, and theyve made her into a career bag! Bastards!
Even Patrick MacNee has been forced through the self-parody. And Im not just talking about The New Avengers. Whether its in A View to a Kill (you guessed it, another Bond flick), an Oasis music video, or even as an invisible man to Fiennes Steed, hes still stuck playing rip-offs of John Steed. The indignity of it all.
Incidentally, next time you hear this shite about how gays and lesbians shouldnt be allowed to bring up children, just remember that MacNee, whose John Steed is one of the archetypes of the English pin-stripe-suited gentleman, was himself brought up by lesbians. Interesting, huh?
There was a point to all of this. Oh yes. The Avengers, for all its achievements in the ways of cult TV, continues to be affectionately, and craply, parodied. That its format and cast remain so iconic is something to celebrate. The Avengers film may well be a shameless rip off with little to do with the soul of the original, but content yourself that this is just continuing a noble tradition. Its not even a question of whether the film has The Avengerss "feel". The quite wonderful Emma Peel episodes are nothing short of a [pastiche] parody of the gritty realism of the Ian Hendry days - to say nothing of Tara King or Mike Gambits further mockeries. The Avengers changed its form and tone as often as Steed changed his motors. There was no set feel.
As for a conclusion, Rob wondered if it was worth making the distinction between "affectionate parody" which does capture the soul of the original, and the lazy, superficial, post-modern kind, which doesnt. The film was more likely to be a pastiche than a parody - what makes the distinction is whether or not it succeeds (i.e., whether it feels like The Avengers or just pays lip-service to it). In fact, my problems with the film were all perpetrated by The New Avengers in the 70s: the 'grittily real' sets Steed and Company in a far less pleasant and merry world, where things are much more Terribly Serious than they are Rather Fun. The flirtatious sparks between Macnee and Rigg have given way to the shag-around Mike Gambits continuing quest to lay Purdey, and the consummating smooch between Fiennes and Thurman.
Tellingly, when we first meet the Fiennes Steed, hes working his way through a training course, making his way through a quiet English village, and defending himself against killer milkmen and deadly policemen. MacNee and Gambit were doing exactly the same thing twenty years ago, and it had mislaid the feel of the Peel days then.
Summing up, then? As Rossini once said of Wagner (cos I have researched this article), it "had lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour". Disappointing, but quite fun.
This ramble has not been vetted by Mother.
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