But it had big shoes to fill.Gerry Anderson plainly wanted to make something supplying more bang for his buck for the big screen, but in the process seems to have forgotten that 'Thunderbirds' is about International Rescue. Remarkably less time is actually devoted to the much-loved craft every kid in the sixties wanted to own than in any random episode of the TV series. (We don't even see Thunderbird Four.)Also sorely lacking from the series is Barry Gray's terrific music; which unchanged could have really ramped up the tension. But we instead get a rather light-hearted original score from Gray which often falls unsuitably silent at the most dramatic moments.Since so little time is devoted to International Rescue themselves, the crazy dream sequence seems even more overextended than it already is; and just seems to be there because Anderson wanted something different to the TV series. (Which I was perfectly happy with as it was!)The Mars mission is an interesting idea, but the hiccups that require the intervention of the Tracy boys are disposed of surprisingly perfunctorily, and receive insufficient screen time to wrack up the tension the TV series would deliver every week in under an hour. The sequence actually set on Mars - after a journey taking just six weeks! - seems to belong in a different film. (It also looks more like the Moon than Mars, as the pictures sent back by Viking 1 ten years later confirmed.) Nobody - including the Tracys - seems bothered that our first blundering act on encountering Martians seems tantamount to an unintentional declaration of war on Mars and its inhabitants.

I wasn't an avid viewer of the Gerry Anderson television series when I was younger, I may have watched a few episodes, I just found myself drawn more to Stingray and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, nevertheless I watched this movie. Basically it is the year 2065, and Glenn Field are constructing and preparing to launch the manned Zero-X spacecraft mission to land on Mars, but something goes wrong and it crashes during lift-off. Two years later investigations conclude that it was sabotage, so to make sure it doesn't happen again, they decide to call International Rescue to secure and oversee the mission on the second launch. Father Jeff Tracy (Peter Dyneley) is dubious that the Thunderbirds should be used for more serious emergencies, but he allows them to be launched and helped. So his three sons, Scott (Shane Rimmer) in Thunderbird 1 (mostly on ground), Virgil (Jeremy Wilkin) in Thunderbird 2 in air and Alan (Matt Zimmerman) in Thunderdird 3 in space, get going, while Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward (Sylvia Anderson) with driver Aloysius Parker (David Graham) investigates the sabotage threat. They all watch over as the second Zero-X successfully lands on Mars, but there is an appearance by villain The Hood (Ray Barrett) trying to ruin things, and worse some Martians attack the craft and force it leave with damages. Returning to Earth, the Zero-X now does have a serious emergency and need International Rescue, so with Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon (also Graham) and Brains (Graham again), they do everything to save the lives of the four men. Also, in a subplot, Alan feels unappreciated, and has a dream sequence going to "The Swinging Star" nightclub with Lady Penelope, watching Cliff Richard Jr. and the Shadows (as themselves), and this comes true at the end. Also starring Christine Finn as Tin-Tin Kyrano, Ray Barrett as John Tracy, Paul Maxwell as Captain Paul Travers and Bob Monkhouse as Space Navigator Brad Newman / Swinging Star Compere. The puppetry has a charm, the camp music video appearance by Sir Cliff and the group is good fun with their song "Shooting Star", and when it happened there were some alright action moments. My only criticism is that with the spacecraft called Zero-X and Martians attacking, it was too much like the first episode of Captain Scarlet, and it is felt more kiddie than what I remember in the past, but not a bad family science-fiction adventure. The TV programme was number 60 on The 100 Greatest TV Shows, and it was number 24 on The 100 Greatest Kids' TV Shows. Worth watching!

I grew up on Thunderbirds repeats as a kid. The excitement, the explosions, the majestic Barry Gray scores... It was a wonderful programme. Even now I have a great soft spot for it and own the whole series on DVD. Though the episodes now seem quite padded here and there and I watch it with much more cynicism than I did as a child, I still love it. A good episode of Thunderbirds is the perfect nostalgia trip for me.Sad to say, then, that the Thunderbirds movies retain little of the qualities that made the TV show such great fun. Perhaps it's the script: Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were far better leaving the scripting duties to other writers as they couldn't write decent dialogue for peanuts. They wrote Thunderbirds' debut episode, which has awful expository dialogue and lots of pointless sequences that go nowhere - but the episode as a whole is still a classic due to the frenetic atmosphere, the sense of doom and the fantastically imaginative rescue (it's the episode where the Fireflash plane lands on three little buggies). "Thunderbirds are Go!" is just horrendously boring. The first ten minutes are taken up with the Zero-X ship being assembled. Very slowly. Later on we have a long dream sequence where Alan imagines going out for a date with Lady Penelope, which features Cliff Richard and the gang having a sing-song (a musical segment in a Thunderbirds movie - what were they thinking?!) and the entire subplot of what the Zero-X astronauts get up to on Mars has no bearing on International Rescue at all.The Tracy brothers get hardly anything to do in their own film (John, as is customary, has about 5 lines of dialogue, and Gordon just sits about looking glum - even everybody's favourite, Virgil, has barely any screen time at all). Nor, in fact, are the Thunderbird craft used all that often. In 100 minutes of film there's only one real rescue (featuring Thunderbird 2), with IR overseeing operations at the beginning of the film - which involves them sitting around and peering contentedly at control panels. You'd think with 100 minutes - double the length of one of the TV episodes - the Andersons could've plotted loads of thrilling situations and rescues that involved all the Tracy brothers and their Thunderbird machines, but it was not to be. Thunderbirds 1 and 3 swoop about for a few seconds. Thunderbird 4 isn't even in it (despite being on the DVD cover). Nor are the pod vehicles present - couldn't we even have had the Mole drilling away at something? It really is a tedious film. And that's not even mentioning Alan Tracy ignoring his girlfriend, Tin-Tin, and fantasising about Lady P instead. Way to be a good role-model for the kiddies, Alan. Then again he was a snot in the telly series too...Maybe I'm being too hard on what is meant to be an inoffensive kids' film featuring explosions and great model work. But then again the TV show was a genuinely exciting and exhilarating programme, which, at its best, provided great entertainment. "Thunderbirds are Go!" has an uneventful plot, awful dialogue, no decent set-pieces, and - the cardinal sin - a boring rescue that doesn't even utilise the Thunderbird craft to the best of their abilities. It's difficult to imagine kids being wowed by it. You'd be far better off going back to the telly series. Show your kids the Fireflash episodes, or that brill one where giant alligators attacked a manor house. Heck, show them the daft one where Parker encouraged everybody to play bingo for half an hour. Both younger viewers and adults looking for warm nostalgia will be disappointed with "Thunderbirds are Go!" Avoid.

OK - here's the deal with the Thunderbirds phenomenon: Gerry Anderson & his then wife Sylvia had been producing puppet shows since the late 1950s for the British ITC worldwide distribution company. Progressing from Supercar, thru Fireball XL5 & Stingray (the 1st British TV show filmed in colour), they hit pay-dirt with Thunderbirds. The formula was simple - a worldwide organisation, with good looking heroes (made of plastic of course!), some pretty women for glamour, and lots of hi-tech craft, gadgets and gizmo's. To appeal to the important US market, the characters were often American, although this changed with Captain Scarlet when the cast was made up of a variety of international personnel. The shows were set in near future (about 100 years hence), and were designed to excite kids. And thats just what they did. But as a by-product, they excited adults as well! Thunnderbirds Are Go! gave Anderson and his huge team based in Slough (on the same industrial estate that David Brent occupied 40 odd years later to be exact!) a chance to deliver a colour show to the UK market. Unlike the US (with their inferior NSTC TV system), European TV wasn't available in colour, so all the UK kiddies watching TV only saw B&W. So, the big attraction in the UK for this film was the fact that you could see Thunderbirds in full colour and in cinema sound.So the biggest adventure was launched, with the awesome Zero-X craft crashing not once, but twice, on its way to Mars. A huge opening scene, new characters, a dream sequence, alien encounters, a space battle. Having said all that, the basic plot is a rewrite of 'trapped in the sky', the Thunderbirds pilot episode, with extra padding. The Cliff Richard sequence is very surreal, but I am surprised that none of the Brits have picked up on Bob Monkhouse being the night club compere! The sets were fantastic and were in fact redesigned from those used on the TV programme, so that they looked better on the big screen. Also they looked a lot more hi-tech, with lots of stainless steel and primary colours - very James Bond in fact. Not surprising when you consider that the man doing the special effects was none other than Derek Meddings himself. And it was this attention to detail, the bangs, the noise, the jets, the rockets, the explosions, the splashes, the gadgets (the video telephone and electronic conference voting systems to name but two that have now come to frutition!) Thats what we watched Gerry Anderson for, and why we still love his programmes.In all of Gerry productions, the values have been very much on hardware, although he has employed some of the best scriptwriters. I don't think anyone could claim that his stories have pushed the frontiers of sci-fi, but I don't think he ever meant to. He just meant to entertain, and this film should certainly do that!