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Inspector Gadget should prove mindlessly amusing for child-toting adults only by virtue of its entirely inconsequential mien, while the colourful and upbeat hokum from Disney may offer a minor nostalgic appeal for those young teens who would otherwise be scavenging their parents' video rentals for the latest in R-rated contraband. But be warned! The murder of robotics mayvin Artemus Bradford (Rene Auberjonois) right at the outset of the film, while establishing a necessity for the creation of super hero Inspector Gadget, might be too emotionally steep for the under-7 crowd.
Ostensibly a primer version of the typical James Bond plot, director David Kellogg's technically astute but risk-free movie goes through the predictable motions. And while the high-end special effects required to make Matthew Broderick's Inspector Gadget a viable hero ratchets-up the production bill to $80 million, the screenplay by Kerry Ehrin and Zak Penn is strictly bargain basement. Ironic for a movie that celebrates inventiveness, there is nary a creative nod to story nuance. Oddly, while Disney ventures good-sized dollops of schmaltziness in Tarzan, Inspector Gadget is strictly white bread.
Still, there's plenty happening in this action-packed tale devoted to recounting just how the title character came into being. Feeling beholden when security officer John Brown (Broderick) is critically injured trying to save her doomed Dad, at the hospital Dr. Brenda Bradford (Joely Fisher) okays rebuilding the wannabe cop with all the jiggers and gizmos the deceased scientist was developing. But who will pay for the expensive, rather experimental operation?
Here, the filmmakers feel the compelling need to give youngsters a mini-lesson on the virtues and wiles of venture capitalism as it relates to government services and the cost of labour. Saturday Night Live's Cheri Oteri, in a fine little spin as the disingenuous, photo-op-hungry mayor of Riverton (gosh, wonder who served as her inspiration?), arranges public funding for the surgery that will transform Brown into Inspector Gadget. Per Her Honour's win-win thinking, the security officer thereby realises his life-long dream of becoming a cop; the police department is on its way to a robotic, strike-free work force; and, theoretically at least, there's finally someone sleuth enough to catch dastardly Sanford Scolex, murderous megalomaniac personified, and his cretinous minions.
Rupert Everett's Scolex has more than a passing interest in the hardware that Professor Bradford made his life's work. A veritable Oil Can Harry, he is consumed by a desire to manufacture a super race of mechanical soldiers; they'll need neither food nor sleep and will always do what they're told. World domination, anyone?
But now he'll have Inspector Gadget to deal with. Problem is, Dabney Coleman in a basically lacklustre turn as Police Chief Quimby is dead against the newfangled detective and won't give him a shot at the murder case. Added to that challenge, though Gadget can summon virtually any of 14,000 different devices to spring from his reconstructed limbs and torso, including helicopter blades that readily emanate from his head, to be effective he's going to have to get the hang of his new superpowers. Hence, most of what then follows are the robocop's mechanical misadventures.
Motion picture protagonists as far back as Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp have battled against the encroachments of technology, and Gadget's introspective travail at the dawn of genetic engineering is merely the latest, cutting edge update. i.e.- Asking for oil to spray from his digits by chanting, "Go, go, Gadget oil," he mistakenly soils an adversary with a gloppy jolt of toothpaste. Try to figure out why that inadvertency might be funny to a 9 year-old mind. Frightening.
Diverging from the source material in ways that may cause orthodox moppets to scream heresy, the film relegates sidekicks Penny (Gadget's niece, played by Michelle Trachtenberg) and her dog Brain to tertiary roles. Instead, the second banana duties are assumed by the Gadgetmobile (voiced by D.L. Hughley), the movie's minor league homage to the Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger, but with an attitude. You see, this talking set of wheels comes fully equipped with the chiding soul of an egotistical rap singer. While undeniably true-blue beneath his hood, the wisecracking machine doesn't hide a cynical impatience with his bumbling boss-in-training. Achieving few laughs, the homeboy allusion is a mite tired if not embarrassing.
Of course, what self-respecting children's film dares be seen without a pair of evil twins in tow, a sure-fire allegory for the good and bad in us all, n'est-ce pas? Perhaps sensing that Inspector Gadget was short a few nuts and bolts in the plot department, the filmmakers inject the malevolent clone angle. As Robogadget, the good inspector's diabolical double, at least Mr. Broderick gets to flash that wicked side of his, the one he unveiled to such critical acclaim in Election. But Miss Fisher doing overtime as Robobrenda, the party girl flip side to the super cop's secret heartthrob, seems a curiously out-of-place deliberation on the Madonna-tramp syndrome.
Yet, while there's a loose screw here and a badly thrown monkey wrench there, this movie's troubles are really quite basic. Like his great-grandfather the Tin Man, Inspector Gadget simply lacks a heart.
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