I am of an age to remember watching the original and in fact watched a lot of Gerry Anderson programmes, Twizzel, Four feather falls, Torchy etc. This adaptation I thought was going to be more adult based than the child version it turned out to be. However! After watching it a second time I discovered a new found appreciation for it, Johnathon Frakes got the camaraderie of the charactures just right and this film now is considered by me to be very good, I would quite easily it watch again. Johnathon has a very good directors eye, nicely done sir.

I'm quite possibly a huge fan of Gerry Anderson's stuff. Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett, Stingray, even his lesser known shows (well except The Secret Service, I thought that was naff but still), you name it, I enjoy it.So how dare they even make a film about the Thunderbirds.... even though they're hardly in the chuffing film to begin with! Instead all we get are some silly and quite frankly stupid shenanigans involving a sadly annoying Alan Tracy running around Tracy Island trying to save the Tracy family from an incredibly over-acting Ben Kingsley as The Hood.Too bad then, that he gets trapped by a tidal wave of terrible dialogue, unfunny moments that would make even the Spy Kids cringe with envy and most importantly a complete lack of respect to the original source material.Even Hans Zimmer's score is nowhere near the excellence of Barry Gray.When even your creator calls it the biggest pile of crap he's ever watched you know your film is completely doomed...

I think one of the big problems with this movie was that it appeared to be directed at children, while still aimed at having some content of interest to Adults.In the end, it was liked by neither. That said, some kids do like it, and my daughter has watched it repeatedly.The traditional storyline is warped and twisted to put the three main heroes of the movie as kids. This really does not exactly make it a faithful homage to the Thunderbirds.... bit more a rather lame kids adventure story.The standout characters are Lady Penelope and Parker. Richard Curtis wrote their lines, and they are faithful renditions of the originals. Clearly.... he should have written the whole movie.Not a great movie, and probably wiped out the somewhat talented Jonathan Frakes career as a director (more the fault of the script than his direction).

I enjoyed this movie with my siblings when we bought it, but my parents only tolerated it. It's understandable since this was obviously written for younger children. You may say I don't know what I'm talking about since I haven't seen the original TV series but for me, I can't get past the fact that the characters were played by puppets. Blame it on my generation if you want but the Thunderbirds was far more entertaining.Yes they could have made the special effects better and developed the characters better. The continuity errors were horrible! Still it made for good laughs for my family. I loved how dramatic it was. I mean it's not new that heroes get hurt and it appears that they have died but they are miraculously revived, but their are just parts of the movie that pulled me in and made me care about the characters.There were also parts that pulled me out of the story as well however. The sappy romance between Tintin and Alan is an example. You can totally tell from the beginning that they'll end up together. Thankfully there was no kissing. It's a kid's movie after all and you shouldn't expect kids who have only just started to like each other to kiss right away! I enjoyed the jokes in it and my family would just randomly quote the movie and start laughing especially if the joke was relevant to what we were doing at that moment. We also memorized the song for the ending credits (Thunderbirds Are GO) and sang it all the time.Yes it could have been made better, cooler, faster, maturer, all that jazz, but can't we also enjoy it for the amount of work that undoubtedly went into this movie as all movies. Anyone who's made a movie will know what I'm talking about. I think it wouldn't hurt for them to try again. Most people didn't even see the 1960's version or the 2004 version so if the movie was remade better and more widely advertised, it would be a big hit. There is a lot of potential in this story.