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In addition, the film indulges in a fair bit of titillation—again, most of it played for comic effect, but still. It's one thing to depict kids taunting each other over their underwear when they dry off after a swim, but it's something else entirely to introduce a female character from a male character's point of view, by bringing the camera in tight on her rear end; the fact that the woman turns out to be buck-toothed and, um, not conventionally pretty is an amusing enough payoff, but still, the film does encourage the audience to leer along with her male co-worker. This same woman, being the resident geek among the villains, is then drawn to Brains by his "stimulating" intelligence, so she tries to get physical with him, telling him, as he squirms, what a "sizzling" couple they'd make. One of the heroes, meanwhile, is Lady Penelope (Sophia Myles), a prim-and-proper British dame whose bubble-bath scene and willingness to pluck a wire from her bra (so that one of the boys can hotwire something) are certainly tame by James Bond standards, but still may be a little much.

Lady Penelope and her butlerwith the FAB 1

The script, the performances, and the direction are lacking in many other areas, too. The plot abounds with holes (the Thunderbirds are supposed to keep their identities secret, yet no one blinks when Jeff Tracy, a presumably identifiable billionaire astronaut, walks around London right after he lands one of his ships there), and the dialogue is often delivered in a bland, perfunctory manner. Bill Paxton, who was quite enjoyable as a loony side character in the last two Spy Kids films, here puts on his serious face so that he can dispense suffocatingly earnest life lessons to his son. (It doesn't help that Paxton already taught the key lesson, that you can't save everyone, to Matthew McConaughey in U-571; in this, as in other things, Thunderbirds has the feel of a stale retread.) It is especially disheartening to see a talented actor like Ben Kingsley stoop to such dreck as this, and so soon after his powerhouse role in House of Sand and Fog. The one saving grace among the actors is Ron Cook, who plays Lady Penelope's manservant; he does a very game job as this film's comic relief, but everyone else comes off stiff and wooden—you know, like a marionette.

Talk About It

1. Jeff Tracy says you can't always save everyone. Is this true? Then how do you choose whom to save, and whom not to save—whether physically or spiritually? Who saves people, and how? What is our role?
   
   
2. Fermat says "everything can be explained by science." Do you agree or disagree? What are the limits of science? Is there anything that cannot be explained by science? Can such things be explained at all? How?
   
   
3. Fermat tells Alan, "We make quite a pair—it's hard for me to talk, it's harder for you to listen." How important is communication? How do keep the channels open between us?
   
   
4. What do you make of the fact that the Thunderbirds themselves don't do much in this film? Do you think this film strikes a good balance between teamwork and individual efforts?

The Family Corner

Thunderbirds is rated PG for "intense action sequences and language." Brains, in particular, uses mild four-letter words like "damn." The violence is mostly of the exploding-machinery kind, though there are scenes of peril in which a monorail car is trapped underwater, a person dangles above a giant mining drill while someone steps on his hand, etc. The island is also populated by dangerous animals, such as scorpions and hornets. There are also occasional references to the underwear of various characters.

Photos © Copyright Universal Pictures

Based on a family-friendly, British television series in which the space-traveling heroes were actually marionettes, Thunderbirds is a new live-action adventure film aimed at younger audiences. According to mainstream criticsand a few religious press critics, the movie misfires badly.

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