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Superheroes are super-funny! The Avengers make a lot of noise - and some cracking jokes - as they save the world, writes BRIAN VINER

By Brian Viner, Film Critic for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:55 EST, 23 April 2015 | Updated: 02:02 EST, 24 April 2015

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (12A)

Verdict: CGI-driven extravaganza

Rating:

When Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), eye-patched mentor to the planet's mightiest superheroes, declares in Avengers: Age of Ultron that 'we have nothing but our wit and our will to save the world', he's fibbing, just a bit.

A reported budget of more than a quarter-of-a-billion dollars comes in rather handy, too, enabling writer-director Joss Whedon to pull off one of the most extravagant contests of Good versus Evil ever to unfold on a cinema screen.

Extravagant, but not always coherent. As so often with these computer-generated blockbusters, the narrative often plays second fiddle to the spectacle and, sometimes, second fiddle is drowned out altogether by synthesisers at full blast. It’s a very loud film, yet mostly shot in genteel Middlesex at Shepperton Studios.

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The comic stars of Avengers: Age of Ultron, who this time face a considerable challenge from a rogue robot

Whatever, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the mindbogglingly lucrative film franchise based on Marvel Comics characters — will love this latest adventure.

It loosely adheres to the age-old theme of a good monster turned bad, though the monster is, in this case, a rogue robot, the fiendishly powerful Ultron (James Spader), conceived as a global peace-keeping programme, only to use all its artificial intelligence to reach the conclusion that humans in general, and superheroes in particular, need wiping out.

In this inglorious project, he is assisted by two newcomers to the superhero/supervillain genre — a pair of vengeful orphans from the fictional country of Sokovia to whom special powers have been gifted. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) can bend minds and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) can move at the speed of light.

All this adds up to a considerable challenge for our familiar platoon of caped, masked and otherwise accessorised crusaders, one that even Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) thinks might actually be beyond them, though no such doubts afflict the perpetually angry Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).

In any case, he — or, rather, his gentle alter-ego Bruce Banner — has other matters on his mind, notably a stilted, rather touching romance with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

Robert Downey Jr stars as Tony Stark - or Iron Man - as part of the band of accessorised crusaders

It is in these quieter moments that Whedon, who also wrote and directed The Avengers (2012), is able to show another side to his pedigree. In what must sometimes seem like a former life, he was the creator of the TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer and one of the co-writers on Toy Story, so humour is one of the major tools in his workbox, and gets wielded here about as often as he thinks he can get away with it.

Which might be a fraction too much for those who believe that the threat of Armageddon is essentially a serious business.

Moreover, and this might just be me, but having sat through the courtroom saga The Judge fairly recently, I’ve just about had my fill of Downey Jr doing his wittily sardonic, po-faced act.

Still, there are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, most of them involving Thor (Chris Hemsworth, again playing the Norse god more or less as captain of a public-school first XV), who invites his fellow superheroes to lift his hammer (they can’t — cue predictable jokes about not getting it up), and later starts issuing a grandiose pronouncement: ‘I am Thor, son of Odin, as long as there’s life in my breast . . .’ — only to fizzle out, admitting that he’s run out of things to say.

But who goes to see Avengers movies for laughs? When ten-cylinder push comes to jet-propelled shove, Whedon knows his audience, and supplies the required fireworks.

The closing battle scene is outrageously spectacular, the collateral damage basically extending to the entire country of Sokovia as our planet- savers, by now boosted by the world’s deadliest acronym in the form of Stark’s butler J.A.R.V.I.S. (Paul Bettany), go toe-to-toe with Ultron’s robot army.

It’s rousing, CGI-tastic stuff, and it will show you how a film can not only cost more than $250,000,000 to make but, more than likely, make it all back — and some.

The cast of Avengers talk the future of robots and technology

The Falling (15)

Verdict: Strange, haunting drama

Rating:

FOR all the ideas and ingenuity behind it, Avengers: Age Of Ultron is nothing if not formula-driven. That’s the last thing that can be said about the week’s other standout film, The Falling, a thoroughly enigmatic, if not downright weird, and yet captivating story about an outbreak of mass hysteria, which takes the form of fainting fits, at an all-girls’ school somewhere in England in 1969.

Conceived, written and directed by Carol Morley, the film is inspired by actual episodes of mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, as it is more properly known.

Here, the narrative flows around two 16-year-old best friends, Abbie (Florence Pugh) and Lydia (Maisie Williams).

Florence Pugh (left) and Maisie Williams (right) star in The Falling, a 'downright weird' film about an outbreak of mass hysteria in an all-girls' school somewhere in England in 1969 to the consternation of the headmistress

At first, it is the charismatic Abbie who does the fainting, but as she is sexually active, not least with Lydia’s priapic, rather predatory brother Kenneth (Joe Cole), it is hinted that pregnancy might be at the root of the problem.

Only then, Lydia starts fainting, too, and soon all the girls and even one of their teachers are at it, to the consternation of the chain-smoking headmistress (Monica Dolan) and her fierce deputy (Greta Scacchi, looking terrifyingly severe).

Is it a physical phenomenon, or emotional? Might it be faked, or even supernatural, or just an intense expression of sisterhood?

Cleverly, Morley keeps us guessing, not just to the end but beyond. It’s one of those films that you think about all the way home.

At times, I was strongly reminded of Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975), especially when an inexplicable tragedy strikes, but this is a truly singular picture, and beautifully acted, above all by Williams (only 18, but already something of a veteran, as Arya Stark in the TV series Game Of Thrones) and Pugh, a strikingly pretty newcomer and a proper, gold-plated find.

It takes some doing to steal the eye from Maxine Peake, who plays Lydia’s strange, preoccupied mother, but both these young actresses manage it.

Here’s a timely reminder, in a week of such excess, that small budgets can pay off, too.