Anyone seen the Thunderbirds movie? It's shit. My childhood memories have been raped.

Starts well. Nice retro 60s-style animated credit sequence with a half-decent Hans Zimmer remix of the original theme. Then we get some actual Thunderbirds, which is good. And then what? We get an hour and a half of three Spy Kids rejects running around like twats and getting into "hilarious" scrapes with "hilarious" evil henchmen. Alan was always the most annoying character in the TV series, and in this respect the movie actually builds upon the show.

Lady Penelope is the best thing about it. Cool, sassy, sexy, totally in control. The moment where she purrs "hello boys" to Alan and his hormonally-charged pals is the highlight. Her car isn't as bad as everyone would have you believe. And Parker is just about right.

What about the dudes who actually fly the Thunderbirds? Scott, Virgil, Gordon and John? Well... let's put it this way. The puppets had more charisma. These four nobodies (five if you count Brady Corbett - and what the fuck kind of a name is that anyway? only in America - as Alan) are about as interesting as something that's really not interesting at all. It's a tribute to how singularly unmoved I was by these cretinous pricks that I can't actually think of a sarky metaphor for their totally uninvolving performances.

Not enough Thunderbirds! Why did we tune into the show? Because of the fucking Thunderbirds! We wanted to see explosions and cool spaceships and International Rescue! We didn't want to see a poor rehash of Spy Kids on a tropical island! IT'S RUBBISH!

OK. Rant over. Anyone who feels the need to disagree with me, please do. I'm always willing to consider alternative viewpoints. And I'm not one of those sad acts who spends all his time online talking about how much of a better job I could have done of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. I just feel very strongly about this travesty.

Phew. Lunched out. Going to have tea now. D'you want a bourbon?

So there were no redeeming features about this film at all then?

I think this is one of those films where you just have to accept that it is, first and foremost, a kids movie. In that respect, I think it actually did very well. In fact, having an hour and thirty minutes of whizz-bang special effects and rescues probably just wouldn't have worked.

My own personal pet peeve, Thunderbird 4 now apparently being stored on TB2 and not in a pod notwithstanding, was the blinkin' product placement. Ford was absolutely everywhere, even the cars in the weather report footage were Fords, as were the random quads that just happened to be on Tracey Island. Kids might not have noticed, but I did and it was just a bit too in-my-face for my liking.

But I think overall, you have to accept that it wasn't a Thunderbirds episode remake - it was, indeed, Spy Kids with Thunderbirds. Accept that, and a lot of the complaints go away. It almost reminds me of those Australian shows where you often get the technically-savvy kids running rings round the adults and getting them out of scrapes, and in that sense I think it was handled quite well combined with the backup from Penelope and Parker (which was very in line with the series, I think).

Yeah... I suppose you're right. I'm just very bitter and twisted and I enjoy nailing small furry creatures to pieces of wood and displaying them in my garden shed...

Absolutely spot-on about the product placement.

There were a few reedeming features but not enough to save it from drossdom. In my opinion, that is.

OW! I just swallowed a splinter...

May I say that Fab 1 looks horrendous, and since when do millionares drive Fords

I STILL think that Joanna Lumley could do a good Lady Penelope even considering her age now.

Yeah, but Busted did the theme tune.

All together now...

"Thunderbirds are go, go, go, go" (etc)

This is the last post I'm going to let through Moderation.


From now on, if you've got nothing to add to the review and just want to generally talk about what ever is being reviewed, can you start a thread in the Media section, as the Reviews section is just for detailed reviews only, as a quick stop guide to see if a film/CD etc is any kop!

Baz.