I saw this movie three times and have one thing to say: "Oh, WOW!" When I saw that it had been cut to an hour and a half I wondered if it could be worth the price of the ticket. Afterwards, I had to check my watch to confirm that it had not been two hours. Avengers hits the ground at a dead run and never slows. Uma Thurman is outstanding, even more so than in Batman and Robin, in each of her six or so outfits. She also has two roles to play, that of Emma Peel and a clone made by Sir August de Winter. The original is sweet, sexy, and smarter than should be possible, beating John Steed at chess without looking at the board, after beating him at fencing. The clone is far wilder, every stance aggressive and never saying a word. The superb jumpsuit was designed for the clone, then used by the real Mrs. Peel (her husband was a test pilot who died, very convenient) at the end of the movie.

The hero is supposed to be John Steed, played by Ralph Fiennes. I identified more with Mrs. Peel, as she didn't always wear a pinstripe suit, even in the final infiltration scene, and was better at everything than Steed. One thing I do have to credit him for is having the sense to wear bulletproof dress clothes. The special effects and scenery of Avengers were flawless and unique. In de Winter's mansion is an Escher-style continual staircase, along with a series of rooms that all loop back on each other. If you look hard at the staircase, you can see how it was done, but the overall look is still good. One of the people at the Ministry, the place where the Prospero program was headed, is invisible. The objects that he picks up are moved smoothly, with none of the jerkiness brought about by wires or other traditional methods of floating items. When this invisible man, Col. Jones, walks in front of an overhead projector is the only time he is visible, and that's as a water-drop style silhouette.

The plot has one large problem, though. The entire premise is based on the assumption that weather can be controlled with enough knowledge. Chaos theory states this as an impossibility, since no one can compensate for the effect of people and animals on wind, for one example. Mrs. Peel's clone destroyed the lab being used to research a weather shield that would prevent anyone from tampering with Britain's weather. The Ministry didn't know about the clone, and gave Mrs. Peel a chance to prove her innocence with Steed's help.

On their first visit to de Winter, they learn that he has no great love for the Ministry. Mrs. Peel also finds a snow dome from a place called Wonderland Weather. They go there and find that it sells weather. The receptionist leaves for a minute, and they walk through another door. There are two men in teddy bear suits slumped over the table. De Winter had killed them earlier, as they wanted to resign from the project. Two other teddies saw the heroes, one was going up and one was going down an elevator. Peel follows the one going up, Steed takes the low road. Peel's quarry jumps down on her and tries to push her off the edge of the building. The teddy's head gets pushed off, revealing the clone. Peel is surprised, then Steed comes and the clone flees.

I'm not going to tell you the entire plot, but the final scene involves walking across the Thames River in inflatable spheres. Plus fencing on a catwalk over raging water. Nor fighting on wires. The four tornados were a good effect. And I'm not even going to mention the hedge maze and mechanical bees.

Final verdict: GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!