Movie Reviews (III): "The Thunderbirds"

Saturday Morning Imagination
Thunderbirds
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Screenplay by Peter Hewitt, William Osborne, Michael McCullers
Starring Bill Paxton, Ben Kingsley, Brady Corbet, Sophia Myles, Ron Cook, Anthony Edwards, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, Soren Fulton
Rating: PG
Running Time: 90 minutes
Reviewed by David Lavery
1 Star

Saturday mornings as a child (and many a weekday as well) were spent fantasizing myself as one of those DC superheroes I read about constantly in my beloved comics or playing with self-constructed plastic and clay superhero action figures on the living room floor in front of television cartoons. When, as an adult, I have recognized at work in a movie or TV show the sort of puerile weekend inspiration I knew so well back then, I have, with a shock of childish recognition, named it Saturday Morning Imagination (SMI).

Thunderbirds is the worst kind of SMI. Based on a 1967 British animated adventure series, done in low-tech, cheesy “Supermarionation,” from Gerry Anderson, the creator of such earlier shows as Fireball XL-5 and Supercar, this high-tech, cheesy, Americanized live-action version stars Bill Paxton as Jeff Tracey, the billionaire former astronaut (in Apollo 13?) and widowed patriarch of a family of blue-eyed blonde-haired boys who comprise “IR,” International Rescue, aka The Thunderbirds; Brady Corbet as his anxious-to-be-part-of-the-team teen black sheep son; Sophia Myles as the left-over-from-the-British-original Lady Penelope; and Sir Ben Kingsley, in perhaps the most embarrassing performance of his career, as The Hood, a clichéd Bond villain with psychic powers who seeks revenge against the Traceys. Because here the good guys have the fabulous, secret tropical island base, from which they jet all over the world and into outer space to save those in danger, the villain must, in a reversal of the 007 formula, invade it, and so The Hood does, and, in a completely shocking development, only the kids--the bad Tracey son, Tintin (Hudgens), the never-before-noticed beautiful daughter of a Tracey servant, Fermat (Fulton), the nerdy, bespectacled boy named after a theorem--must save the day.

At a Saturday morning preview screening of Thunderbirds no one over ten was laughing at the pre-pre-pubescent humor--most of the film’s supposedly “comic” moments involve the hilarious stammer of the Traceys’ resident genius, Brains (Edwards)--and I doubt anyone over six found The Hood’s invasion of Tracey Island the least bit suspenseful. From its cartoon opening credits, to its retro narrator, to its prolific verbal and genre clichés, this inexcusable film invites us to think little of it, and, surprise, surprise, by its silly end, we do.

Thunderbirds, of course, has a lesson to teach, delivered father to son, during the movie’s final showdown between Thunderbirds and Hood in London: ‘”You can’t save everyone.” This film, for example, cannot be saved. Thunderbirds clearly aspires to be a franchise, perhaps one with the appeal of, say, the Spy Kids films or, perhaps, Austin Powers. It succeeds, however, only in being one of the worst films of the year. Any eight year old could have imagined a better movie--any Saturday.