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 <i>yogi bear<i> 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 didn't hurt the ratings either . after all it's not a coincidence that you can'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 don'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 doesn'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 , doesn'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 shouldn'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 doesn'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 haven'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 . ( michael redman has written this column for one score and three years and thinks he's going outside for a while . he'll come in occasionally to check his email at <a href= " mailto : redman@bvoice . com " >redman@bvoice . com</a> ) [this appeared in the 8/20/98 " bloomington independent " ( formerly the " bloomington voice " ) , bloomington , indiana . michael redman can be contacted at <a href= " mailto : redman@bvoice . com " >redman@bvoice . com</a> ] -- <a href= " mailto : mailto : redman@bvoice . com " >mailto : redman@bvoice . com</a> this week's film review at <a href= " http : //www . bvoice . com/ " >http : //www . bvoice . com/</a> film reviews archive at <a href= " http : //us . imdb . com/m/reviews_by ? michael%20redman " >http : //us . imdb . com/m/reviews_by ? michael%20redman</a> 
