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A fun afternoon for preteen moviegoers that has just enough charm, humor and game- for-anything actors to keep parents halfway interested as well.
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75When all is said and done, the movie's a steaming plate of corn -- and, indeed, that's part of the pleasure. Myles, though, delivers a fine comic performance with no strings attached.
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Smartly written by William Osborne and Michael McCullers, Thunderbirds expertly targets kids. Yet parents won't be entirely bored.
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70This special-effects-crammed action blockbuster is not rocket science. It's more like rocket fun.
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It's a pretty entertaining, extremely good-looking cinematic blip--not important, not outstanding, but better than a lot of PG stuff that attempts to reach both parents and their 8-year-old kids.
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60A standard, gadget-crazed exercise in whiz-bang adventure with its tongue lodged deep inside its cheek.
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Without fail its upbeat cheesy wholesomeness is always good for a smile.
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58Director Jonathan Frakes keeps the tone just this side of tongue-in-cheek.
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50Kids are most likely to be entertained by this live-action offering, although baby-boomer fans of the series will appreciate how closely it hews to the show's foundation.
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It's clean and cheerful entertainment, blithely piggybacking on a beloved classic. No wonder Anderson washed his hands of this project - the filmmakers tampered with and trampled on his magic formula.
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50Fun at times and tedious at others, it's an action-adventure fantasy aimed particularly at gadget-loving boys.
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Making a live-action version of Thunderbirds is like rounding out the edges on a Picasso painting to render it more realistic.
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50The production design is phenomenal, reproducing the series' swinging '60s decor and techno-geek flourishes, from the launch pad under the swimming pool to Lady Penelope's pink roadster, which turns into a mini-plane.
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50The trouble is, the kids seem to be in one earnest "After School Special"-type of movie, while the adults occupy a retro-futuristic world more like the original TV show.
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50The story rarely gets fired up to "maximum thrust," to use the rocket-speed parlance of its heroes.
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40Thunderbirds is devoted to the principle that character and story are but rude interruptions to the real order of business, an endless display of profound vehicle fetish.
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Aside from a couple of rescue set pieces that bookend it, the film is strictly low-wattage in terms of action.
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38A movie like this is harmless, I suppose, except for the celluloid that was killed in the process of its manufacture, but as an entertainment, it will send the kids tiptoeing through the multiplex to sneak into "Spider-Man 2."
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38Beautiful Brit actress Sophia Myles ("From Hell") is so arch, canny and amusing as the posh, pink-obsessed spy Lady Penelope, it's as if she is acting in the movie this should have been.
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38Watching a misfire like Thunderbirds illustrates how impressive the "Spy Kids" movies are.
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30Kids of all sizes and genders are going to be disappointed.
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30Dreary, joyless.
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As the dapper Lady Penelope, Sophia Myles tries to infuse the enterprise with some "Charlie's Angels" verve, but she's only one life vest, and the movie is a downed plane.
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This live-action feature actually has less of a pulse than the puppet version.
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25The action is snappy and quick, but why does this youth-targeted adventure pit white male heroes against a trio of villains comprising a black man, an Asian man, and an ugly woman?
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25Not only achingly dull, it has no respect for its origins.
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20With its eye-popping color palette and surreal sense of ever-heightening melodrama, Thunderbirds comes across as "Spy Kids'" poorer British cousin.
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20Abomination of a movie.
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Simply put, this is a bad, bad film, this summer's answer to last summer's "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman." A dog for the dog days of summer.