Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds is the name given to five vehicles, specifically designed by a benevolent billionaire family, called the Tracys. Those magnificent men in their flying (swimming, subterranean and orbiting) machines have formed a company called International Rescue, which helps people who need to be saved from peril.

Let me be clear. I am ignorant of the Gerry Anderson television show. Aside from kitsch value, it means nothing to me. Perhaps, I'm not the right person to be criticising the live-action remake. Nonetheless, I'm wearing my reviewer's cap.

If there's one saving grace, it's the first 20 minutes. The gloriously inventive credits sequence, animated and filled with gleefully showoffy moments, is the best I've seen since Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. If the rest of the movie is too dull to resemble the manic energy of the best Saturday morning cartoons, the credits are full of zesty life.

The opening action scene has plenty of competent visual effects, while an oilrig blazes and explodes piece by piece right before our eyes. Thunderbirds show up and save the day, while the youngest Tracy, Alan (Brady Corbet), wistfully looks on, emoting, "Gee.. I wish I could be a Thunderbird." The script doesn't give anyone much to do and uses obvious cliche constructions to deliver it's plot.

The Hood, played oh-so-seriously by Ben Kingsley, with a nice line in red wardrobe and morphing contact lenses, wants to steal the Tracy's subterranean vehicle and use it to run around the world, stealing all the gold from underground bank vaults. Anyway, he distracts the Thunderbirds with a few well placed missiles and captures Tracy Island, leaving the children to save the day. Alan, his best friend Fermat and a girl called Tin Tin are played with irritating cuteness.

At the part where The Hood digs into the Bank of England, I was reminded of Goldfinger, in which James Bond does a few scratchpad calculations on knocking off Fort Knox ("$15,000,000,000 in gold bullion weighs 10,500 tons. Sixty men would take 12 days to load it onto 200 trucks"). Goldfinger was a gleeful caper flick and yet knowing enough to avoid insulting our intelligence. This film, by comparison, exists on the simplest possible thought.

I remember enjoying Robert Rodriguez's first two Spy Kids movies very much, feeling that they echoed the right kind of hip comedy and action, when Saturday morning cartoons were the most important stories in the world, and filled with invention. By comparison, Thunderbirds has been directed by Jonathan Frakes on autopilot. He chooses to bore us by delivering a movie less interested in the title and more on techno-babble-spouting children and gag-inducing family life lessons.

I sincerely doubt even purists will get much out of this. A complete waste of time.