Okay, I'll admit to morbid curiosity on this one, but speaking from the point of view of being one of the original saw-it-first-run fans of this show, the eight-year-old in me felt a duty to represent and see if this thing is up to the old show or should be hauled away to the trash heap by Thunderbird Two.

First, they have the look and general feel down cold. Of course since the original show was made using actual models that wasn't too hard. Just break out the old models and duplicate them. Tracy Island looks the way it did on the show as well, complete with the staff; I'd almost forgotten about Kiranno- probably because in the movie he's less oriental and more pacific islander- and now that I'm watching an old tape of the show I am reminded that his daughter Tin-Tin is indeed an old character. All good.

The bad comes in the plot. This movie takes place when Tin-Tin and the youngest Tracy brothers are still in high-school, just so we can get in all that good-old teen angst (like every other piece of celluloid around these days), as well as adding a new character in the form of Brain's son (I don't remember him having one before)- I guess just so they can have a good Spy-Kids grouping going. The film at this point focuses on the three kids and pretty much ignores everyone else. In fact, the four older Tracy brothers get a total of ten minutes screen-time throughout the entire movie, with no character development, or really any way of telling which brother is which. As far as the main story is concerned, it seems to be a fad of late for turning old shows into new movies; bring up the old setting and characters only briefly before trashing everything and everyone and letting a new or younger generation take over things. Considering this show always took place in the future to begin with, that trip wasn't really necessary.

The bad guy is at least straight out of the original show- from the pilot in fact. Kiranno did indeed have a bald telepathic brother who sought after the secrets of International Rescue. And the one playing Brain had his shy stutter down, though the glasses were two conservative when compared to the original. I did love Lady Penelope and her butler; they were letter-perfect, complete with such forgotten details as the teapot radio transmitter. The rest, well I paid to see ALL the Thunderbird Characters in action, not just to watch a huddle of four of them all get locked away before cutting to the second-strong characters for the rest of the film. The plot could have been good but the film seemed too concerned with getting in on the Spy Kids craze to concentrate on making a good movie.

The original series had no need for angst-ridden teens, it survived off of heroic men and women doing incredible things amidst tense situations, and not just tense-for-eight-year-olds. Try watching an episode sometime; there was peril, lives at risk, and genuine excitement- all made during an age when there wasn't so much concern about if something other than blue-ponies might scar the tender psyche of toddlers or if a kid is fit for anything other than insipid plots. A kid's mind is what you feed it.

All in all, they did their homework on the details and the look; the ones behind this film did an excellent job on that and congrats should go out to them on that regard. But it breaks down with the plot and the decision to make it a teen-angst film and leave the rest of the family out in the cold of space. Not at all bad (I've seen bad and this ain't close to it), but could have been much better. I'm glad this film made it out but dissapointed in how some of it was handled. My advise? Wait for the video, rent it for a dollar, then compare for yourself. F.A.B. (did they ever explain in the series what that stands for?).