Thunderbirds 2004

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: [The movie] dumps the puppets and replaces them with human actors only slightly less wooden. Read more

Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: A rudimentary Spy Kids knockoff. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Dreary sci-fi adventure. Read more

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: A pretty entertaining, extremely good-looking cinematic blip. Read more

Joshua Katzman, Chicago Reader: There's enough special effects razzle-dazzle to distract the average ten-year-old, but the script by William Osborne and Michael McCullers is stilted and humorless -- a little camp might have helped. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: This Thunderbirds is too generic an action piece to be the defining experience Anderson's strange show once was. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: This is like a C-movie version of Spy Kids. And I didn't even like Spy Kids. Read more

Bob Townsend, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Thunderbirds is another movie that feeds the notion that Hollywood knows how to take the oddest and oldest of material and make it look spectacular -- even if the final product is as empty as a dummy's head. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: A charmless, leaden tale that never gets off the ground, even when its characters soar through the air. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Not only did the 7-year-old boy inside me have a high old time, so did the 7-year-old daughter sitting next to me. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: A feeble Spy Kids imitation. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: A new and rather breathtakingly misconceived attempt to revisit a vintage TV show that did not under any circumstances need to be revisited. Read more

Gregory Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly: Long may 'F-A-B!' live on, even as this mild update slips into the movie-history remainder bin. Read more

Alan Niester, Globe and Mail: Simply put, this is a bad, bad film, this summer's answer to last summer's The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Read more

Gary Dowell, Dallas Morning News: A visually impressive, but largely lifeless, limp noodle that strips the details that made the 1960s TV series work and features a bland coming-of-age story and a by-the-numbers revenge plot. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Thunderbirds looks like something that began as a high-camp adventure for grownups and then got dumbed down for kids. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: This foolishly conceived movie version of the 1960s sci-fi TV show is not only achingly dull, it has no respect for its origins. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Thunderbirds wants to be two things at once: a live-action gee-whiz kiddie flick and a nostalgic spoof of 60's England when it swung like a pendulum. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: Aside from possibly launching a Ben Kingsley line of cosmetics, Thunderbirds seems destined to leave no lasting mark. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: This is another example of the idiocy that often results when Hollywood attempts to convert an animated TV show into a non-animated movie. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: This is a movie made for an audience that does not exist, at least in the land of North American multiplexes. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: A fun afternoon for preteen moviegoers that has just enough charm, humor and game- for-anything actors to keep parents halfway interested as well. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Not intended for people old enough to pine for the puppets. It's for people who don't remember the first cast of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: What impenetrable, overwrought codswallop this one's turned out to be. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Fun at times and tedious at others, it's an action-adventure fantasy aimed particularly at gadget-loving boys. Read more

David Rooney, Variety: Frakes, who reinvigorated the Star Trek franchise with First Contact, fails to pump the same energy into this tube-to-screen transfer. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Village Voice: It's just another entry in a seemingly endless line of Spy Kids knockoffs. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: This movie is horrible to sit through, let alone talk about. Read more