Movie fails to emulate cult series

Certificate: 12 Nationwide

By choosing to release their film simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic without press previews, Warner Brothers have created a minor media frisson around The Avengers which the finished product barely warrants. Despite protestations from producer Jerry Weintraub that he wanted audiences to "decide for themselves" on his film's merits, the suspicion was always that a major damage-limitation exercise was under way, and so it proves - this is the most inept and tedious of all this summer's blockbusters.

With Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman taking the roles created by Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg for the 1960s television series, The Avengers attempts to create a simulacrum of Swinging Sixties England for the present day, but forgets that wit and verve were important elements in the original's success. Director Jeremiah Chechik sets the action, such as it is, in empty streets and countryside, presumably in an attempt to evoke the cheap production circumstances of the TV show, but here cheap just looks cheap.

It can't have been easy wrestling with Don McPherson's uninspired script, but Thur man is quite dreadful, giving further ammunition to those who believe that she's more clothes-horse than actress. Fiennes looks rather woebegone and lost, while Sean Connery, as the megalomaniac villain seeking to control the world's weather, seems to have his mind on other things, and Fiona Shaw, Eddie Izzard and Jim Broadbent are all thrown away in underdeveloped, unfunny supporting roles.

Peppered with the sort of non sequiturs and loose ends that usually indicate severe surgery in post-production, the only good thing about The Avengers is its brevity - at barely over 90 minutes it's almost an hour shorter than other big summer releases such as Godzilla and Armageddon. All the more remarkable, then, that it feels longer than either.