Dirty Squirrel Reviews… Inspector Gadget…

Oh for the love of Christ, I can’t believe that Disney was able to fornicate the skull of one of my favorite childhood cartoon series.

First off, allow me to qualify this… I didn’t ever see this in the theatre when it came out because I was weary of it from the start. I am glad that this travesty unfolded on TBS, because swearing and throwing objects at TBS doesn’t get me banned from the living room. I caught this film (it really hurt to call it that) as part of their 4th of July movie extravaganza.

I guess I can buy Matthew Broderick as Gadget. They even made him look somewhat like Gadget giving him the 5 o’clock shadow and all. I didn’t catch the first part of the movie, so I’m not sure how they qualified him having the gizmos that he had. I think they played Gadget as a bit more hapless than I would’ve liked, but OK, I could see them going there. I seem to recall the Chief being a bit more of a buddy to Gadget instead of a crowbar weilding gotard, but that could’ve just been my youthful “give Gadget a buddy” memory there.

I do know that I wanted to destroy them for the “D.L. Hughley is The GadgetMobile wigga wigga p1mpbot 3000”. The Gadgetmobile didn’t TALK to you. Its coolest feature was morphing into an SUV when Gadget needed to haul Penny and her soccer playing friends home from school. Also, Penny should be a blonde.

What angered me even more is the fact that they destroyed the veil of awesome secrecy that was Dr. Claw. You never saw his face in the cartoon, you never got to see more than his armored right arm bashing the dashboard of his evil vehicle when Gadget foiled his plans. He certainly wasn’t my Honors College Dean with a prosthetic plastic Grab-N-Go grafted onto his hand.

The part that completely dumbfounded me was the very end… when they were playing the credits, they actually made CALLBACKS TO THE THINGS THAT MADE THE CARTOON COOL! They knew what they were doing and threw the good stuff in as retarded nostalgia ha-ha’s in the credits! How insulting!!

Now, why am I so up-at-arms about a cartoon movie remake? I used to idolize Inspector Gadget. I used to sit around and dream up Go-Go-Gadget special effects for myself. I even had a little trenchcoat and hat and my cousin and I used to play Inspector Gadget when we were together at family events. She was Penny, I was Gadget. It mostly degenerated down into me Go-Go-Gadgeting up the copter and we’d chase each other around my aunt’s house. It was great fun when you were six. Trust me. I was so hard-core into Gadget that I could tell when they changed the voice actor for Penny and Gadget in the different seasons. And I always found it strange when they’d randomly give Gadget a moustache. I think that may have been a Season Two thing, but I’m not sure.