THUNDERBIRDS are gone. Thunderbirds, don't go. Thunderbirds are a no-go. Right, now the jokes are out of the way, why is Thunderbirds worth not five, four, three, two, but one star?

Thunderbirds carries such an iconic status from its Sixties' beginnings that any update, spoof or new twist must satisfy the old enthusiast as much as attract the younger audience, just as Gerry Anderson's puppets and sci-fi adventures have entranced successive generations whenever a run of repeats has filled a gap in the TV schedules.

The spoof duo with the Thunderbirds rescue vehicles on their heads caught the flavour perfectly in the theatre show, at once reverent yet irreverent, sending up the nave puppetry with its all-too obvious string attachments, cardboard design and wooden movements.

For the new model of Thunderbirds, director Jonathan Frakes is more drawn to the Spy Kids generation, the Saturday morning cinema club film goer, and so the best recommendation is for adult fans to leave Blunderbirds to their children and go to another film.

Frakes, formerly part of the Star Trek franchise, fails to boldly go anywhere new with his live action re-make of Thunderbirds. After a pedestrian cartoon credit sequence that represents London with a red bus (yawn), he swaps puppets and strings for computer-generated imagery and merely delivers a passable facsimile of the Tracy Island headquarters - landing platforms, retractable swimming pools, fall-away palm trees et al.

He also apes the old Technicilor palette but significantly the hi-tech of yore has not been updated when it needs to be. The Star Trek movies successfully upgraded the machinery, but not so here. The rescue vehicles are a disappointment, the action sequences few and far between and the adrenaline rush non-existent.

Anthony Edwards tries to inject humour as the stammering Brains but the one adult joke - he stumbles over the "eff" consonant - is a poor return. At least Ron Cook's streetwise chauffeur Parker and Sophia Myles's high-class English secret agent Lady Penelope are in the pink, true to the spirit of the original puppets, but Myles's clothes should be far more stylish and better fitting.

The movie decides that corny teenage human interest is more important than rescue missions and so the focus falls on Jeff Tracy's youngest son, Alan, and his thwarted desire to join his brothers in the International Rescue service. In doing so, with the aid of a couple of equally worthy dullard kids, he must take on Ben Kingsley's villainous megalomaniac, The Hood (a baddie role too far for the thespian knight).

Thunderbirds, oh no.

Updated: 16:32 Thursday, July 22, 2004