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Wowzer. Don’t tell anybody, but I’ve been humming “dum ta dum ta dum, In-spec-tor Gad-get” ever since seeing this. Got an implacable craving for Skittles, too, but more about that in a minute.
Despite a lot of bad press, Disney’s latest treatment of a cartoon, coming quickly after, and using the same scriptwriters as, George of the Jungle, is a surprisingly sufferable way to pass an afternoon -- well, part of one, since the movie’s only 75 minutes long -- especially if there’s a child you need to entertain. Matthew Broderick is just so sincere and ingenuous it’s hard not to enjoy his turn as the security guard at a robotics lab who gets blowed up attempting to foil a break-in by an evil industrialist (Rupert Everett), only to come back as a crimefighter enhanced by questionable hardware -- as in, hardware store. Lots of frenetic visuals of Gadget sprouting a helicopter from his head, stilts from his feet, and various Black & Decker implements from his fingertips work better than you might think, making for a few genuinely funny sight gags set up by director David Kellogg, who is just now getting back behind the camera after suffering through the ignominy of drawing as his first assignment Vanilla Ice’s 1991 screen debut, Cool As Ice (how’s that for some trivia?). The set and effects look a little like low-rent Tim Burton, and the Gadgetmobile, a highly modified ‘65 Lincoln (voiced by D. L. Hughley, of ABC’s “The Hughleys”) is silly on a “Multiplication Rock” level without being too offensive to adult sensibilities. There are a couple happily innocent bad puns, and the more adult-level innuendoes seen in the early trailers have been edited out following feedback at test screenings (one of the few times the now standard moviemaking-by-committee method has gotten something right), so it’s mostly kidsafe if you don’t mind a requisite bruised crotch routine (geez, this “Funniest Home Videos”-WCW influence is everywhere). Everett is fun as the also prosthetically gifted Claw, and Joely Fisher (“Ellen”) is sweet as Gadget’s mechanic/love interest. Just beware of some egregious product placement for Yahoo and Skittles...although I don’t recall any kid in the audience holding his/her breath and screaming, “I WANNA USE A SEARCH ENGINE! YOU SAID I COULD USE A SEARCH ENGINE! YOU DON’T LOVE ME! D. S. S.!” C+
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