Thunderbirds Are GO (1968)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

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.

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO is a big screen outing for Gerry Anderson's popular puppet TV series and the good news is that it's a successful one. This successfully captures the magic of the show and is as exciting adventure as you could wish for. I always find myself impressed that Anderson's productions don't pander to kids in any way, instead telling adult story lines that just so happen to have puppets instead of actors on the screen.A wealth of British voice talent helps things considerably and I would even go so far as to call this realistic, at least in the attention to detail. It says something that the puppets are more animated and have more character than many of the so-called TV stars of our modern age. The cameos by Bob Monkhouse and Cliff Richard help to make this a lively experience, and the globetrotting storyline is as explosive and action-packed as you could wish for. Fab? Yes, it is!

'Thunderbirds' is one of those rare television programmes that, rather like 'Star Trek' and 'Dr.Who', seems so ingrained in the public consciousness that it is possible to have never watched a single episode, and yet, have a clear idea what it is about, identify its characters, and recite its catchphrases ( in this case, 'F.A.B.!' and, of course, 'Thunderbirds are GO!". The adventures of 'Jeff Tracy' and his family ( and Lady Penelope and Parker ) enthralled young and old audiences alike for two years on I.T.V. in 1965-66. So popular was it that a feature film was made despite the show not having reached America ( Lew Grade foolishly kept jacking up the asking price to the point where the U.S. networks finally gave up ). The head of United Artists was confidant that it would be a hit, and possibly bigger than the same company's 'James Bond' franchise! The story was certainly grand enough - a manned expedition to Mars gets underway, but crashes as the result of sabotage ( its our old friend 'The Hood' up to its tricks again ). Once the saboteurs are dealt with, the expedition is re-staged twenty-four months later, and the crew of Zero X encounter hideous monsters - rock 'snakes' that spit balls of fire! The journey back to Earth goes wrong, and International Rescue are called upon to save the day...It is an entertaining picture on the whole, though not as good as it could be - there's no 'Thunderbird 4', for example, 'Brains' is hardly featured, and 'Kyrano' and 'Grandma' nowhere to be seen. The Tracys take an awfully long time to enter the plot ( for the first fifteen minutes it looks as if we're watching 'Zero X - The Movie'. International Rescue doesn't have much to do. Perhaps it would have been better to have opened the picture with an unrelated prologue featuring I.R. in action before moving onto the main story.But the good points outweigh the bad - the special effects are marvellous ( several of the crew went on to work on the 'Superman' and 007 movies ), and there's a delightful sequence where Alan Tracy dreams he is having a night out at the 'Swinging Star' club with Lady Penelope, and the cabaret turns out to be none other than - wait for it - Cliff Richard Junior! ( The Shadows also appear in puppet form ). Gerry Anderson later recounted that, at the premiere, a girl in the audience shrieked with excitement when the Cliff puppet appeared on screen! Lady Penelope's Rolls - 'F.A.B.-1' - preempts James Bond's Lotus Esprit in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' by a decade by converting into an amphibious vehicle, the M.E.V.'s journey across the Martian landscape is genuinely eerie, and the rock snakes are indeed nightmarish. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's script ingeniously combines elements of spy thrillers, science fiction, and disaster movies. Among the voice artists is a familiar name - Bob Monkhouse! Barry Gray's music is awesome - the theme that accompanies the assembling of the Zero X at the start of the movie is worthy of Elmer Bernstein.So, with all these things going for it, why wasn't it a hit on its initial release? Anderson thinks it was because not enough was done to promote the fact that it was an original story, and not a compilation of television episodes ( like the 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' pictures ). Perhaps the Thunderbirds phenomenon had peaked, and interest was on the wane when it opened. Whatever the reason, it is a shame as it deserved greater success ( the crew of the 'Zero X' went on to feature regularly in the pages of 'T.V. Century 21' comic ). Nevertheless, a sequel - 'Thunderbird 6' - appeared two years later, to be met with a equally lukewarm response. More recently, in 2004, there was the ill-fated live-action movie starring Bill Paxton and directed by Jonathan Frakes ( of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' fame ). It was not all bad ( Sophia Myles was a terrific 'Lady Penelope' ) but Anderson's lack of involvement doomed the project from the start.Things To Look Out For - it is 2066, and yet Jeff can be seen reading 'The News Of The World', a tabloid rag that folded last year ( not before time either! ). Perhaps Rupert Murdoch Junior is in charge of News Intergalactic?And where else would you see a pink Rolls Royce orbiting Mars? F.A.B.!

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.