Q: Name two things The Avengers and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have in common?
A: They both star Sean Connery, and they both fall into the second category.

It’s just so implausible! A masked villain (oh, puhlease!) going by the moniker of ‘The Fantom’ is terrorising Europe, stealing weapons of ultimate destruction (well, for 1899 anyway – later on in the film it appears that a motor car is so fast it can save the world) trying to start a war so that he can become rich beyond his wildest dreams as an arms-dealer. The British government decide that he needs to be stopped and recruit Allan Quatermain (Connery) to lead a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and one rather annoying lady) to fight evil and save the world. Da-da-da-da-da!

The excess of leading characters also means that you don’t care about what’s happening to our heroes. The obvious main character is Connery’s Quatermain, but his acting is so bad that you are just waiting for his end. ‘I was told that Africa would never let me die’ he says, and a groan of annoyance rippled around the cinema. I know people go on about how Connery was the best Bond, and maybe he was, but is it me, or is his accent – and acting – getting steadily worse as his films go on? He now slurs his words in a Scottish mish-mash of broken vowels and swallowed consonants, throwing in a ‘blohey’ (pretty sure he means ‘bloody’) in now and again. He sounds like he’s doing an impression of Bobby Davro doing an impression of him, and it really doesn’t work.

I can’t quite work out why they threw Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde (Jason Flemyng) in there, apart from the fact that it might have given the film some integrity; having nervous Jekyll battling with his monstrous ‘dark side’…but this, too, didn’t work. This was probably down to the fact that the CGI-enhanced Hyde looked like The Hulk’s younger brother, with his tiny little legs and grossly fat torso. Every time he came on screen I had to stifle an urge to laugh.

While Connery was the worst actor by far on screen, I really had little time for Peta Wilson, playing vampiress Mina Harker, who, apparently, did get bitten by old Dracula after her husband died. Wilson’s dry English accent made her sound (intentionally or not) like she was very bored, or slowly dying. Example: when there is a big explosion, Harker drawls with half-closed eyes, ‘Ohhhhhh, I was afraid something terrrrrible had happened’. She also didn’t appear in the least bit attractive and I couldn’t understand why every guy on board apart from Nemo and Quatermain, was lusting after her. Even Hyde, who tries to convince his alter ego Jekyll to take the formula with the ingenious line ‘she never even looks at you – when you were me she looked at you’. Yup, maybe that was because you were seven-foot-tall and wearing a bulky fat suit.

My personal favourite was Tom Sawyer (Shane West). Completely adorable with his floppy hair and gorgeous accent, I forgot about the fact that Sawyer had no dark past, and no special powers apart from being American. Indeed, he seemed to be only in the League because he gave Quatermain a gun, and the film because Quatermain needed someone to work out his father/son issues with. However, I thought that West played his part admirably, bringing to life the eager-to-please, love-struck Sawyer. I couldn’t work out why Mina Harker chose snarling, camp Grey over him – apart from the fact that she was a vampire – ‘you’re young and sweet…neither are qualities I rate highly’.

The fact that all of the characters – apart from Sawyer, who was, admittedly, a little underdeveloped – an aura of mystery around them, as you could expect, made it quite obvious that there was going to be some kind of traitor. However, despite the way they all suspect Skinner, hammering it down every few minutes to fool you, even from the outset its quite clear who it is. I won’t spoil it for you, although maybe I should, and it’ll persuade you not to view this extraordinary monstrosity.