The Avengers 1998

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: This movie -- gaudy, grandiloquent and often staggeringly silly -- is one more example of how bloated and top-heavy many "event" action movies have become. Read more

Gene Seymour, Los Angeles Times: The movie lets [Fiennes and Thurman] down with a patchwork climax that feels rushed and perfunctory. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: The Avengers is, without a doubt, the worst movie of the summer. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Somebody call Austin Powers, quick! Read more

Keith Simanton, Seattle Times: 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. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Some bad movies are bold outrages; many others become hits. This one hasn't the juice to be either. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: This big-screen version of the classic '60s TV spy show The Avengers can be added to the ignominious heap of updates, remakes, and adaptations that really didn't need to be made. Read more

Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader: Neither elegant nor macho nor elegant-and-macho, Fiennes is terribly cast; Thurman at least provides the equivalent of a dressmaker's dummy on which to hang neo-mod fashions. Read more

Paul Tatara, CNN.com: Your guess would be as good as mine as to exactly what's supposed to be going on in Jeremiah Chechik's The Avengers, and that's even if you haven't seen the movie. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Did anyone really think it would work? Critically savaged, already an embarrassing failure at the box office, The Avengers is a big, spinning Wiffle ball of a movie. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: It seemed like a good idea, but the more you think about it, the clearer it becomes that The Avengers should never have been turned into a movie. Read more

David Bianculli, New York Daily News: This Avengers film is so horrendously, painfully and thoroughly awful, it gives other cinematic clunkers like Ishtar and Howard the Duck a good name. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: At a pared-down, barely rational 100 minutes, The Avengers is short but not short enough. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: This film is an absolute mess. It looks like the regurgitated leavings of something watchable, a cinematic abomination that got pulled apart and put back together so many times that it lost all semblance of coherence. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: Maybe actors should be given some benefit of the doubt when they're directed by a total incompetent like Chechik, but everyone in The Avengers is stupefyingly awful. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: It's a completely botched effort -- botched in its direction, its writing and editing. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Why would this film's creative team start with one of the cleverest series ever and make such a limp, leaden movie? I fail to see the connection. Read more

Tom Charity, Time Out: The trouble is, the film's decadence isn't a put-on, it is, simply, depressingly, degeneratively, decadent. Read more

Godfrey Cheshire, Variety: What's missing is chemistry: the right blend of seriousness and whimsy, and charmingly compelling interplay between leads Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman, who turn in lackluster perfs. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: The new Avengers is dismal in dispiriting, dreary ways, and Ralph Fiennes, playing Macnee's part, is a particular disaster. Read more