The Avengers

Secret agent John Steed hooks up with one fine looking doctor in Emma Peel, in an attempt to figure out what is happening to the world’s weather system. Believing that one Mr. August de Wynter is behind the whole conspiracy, the duo set out to stop him and save the world from his meteorological concoctions.

This movie’s got a truckload of style, a bunch of funky fashions and mod retro-fun, a decent amount of action, but less than I would have expected, some cool special effects and slick gadgeteries, a quick runtime, but a hole-filled plot line that’s just too complex for its own good. There are many things that just didn’t work in this movie’s narrative, but on the whole, the film was fun for me because it offered just enough style, action and humour, to allow myself to dismiss the entanglement of its plot. The film was also very tongue-and-cheekish from the get-go, and laughed at its absurdity as much as we were supposed to. Sure it had a lame bad guy in Sean Connery. Sure the preposterous idea of one man controlling the world’s weather is ridiculous beyond mere words. But seeing that 90% of all action movies that hit our movie screens nowadays have the suspension of disbelief factor grilled up to the highest fantastical levels anyway, I didn’t feel like this movie asked for much more than just that.

This movie is bubble-gum for the style lovers, and a spit wad for those not. It had a pretty cool spy-laced score, a bevy of wonderful set designs, and many other original ditties to occupy my mind as it floated through this 90-minute festival of cotton candy. And if you really think that the plot is overly complicated, just look at it this way: Peel and Emma= the good guys, Mr. August de Wynter= the bad guy. Everything else is just pudding after that. Now you may all think that I am reviewing this film positively because I’m high on pot or something, or that my ground-level low expectations elevated this sub-mediocre discovery to decent time. Well…maybe. The truth is that I’m not high, but I certainly did go into this picture with the lowest of expectations. But despite all that, I came out with a smile on my face, and a pretty sweet flick in my noggin. Ocular junk food for your eyes, cloudy fodder for your mind.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian