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Matthew Broderick has a helicopter in his hat, but this clunky 90s reboot never really gets off the ground.
20%
20%View →This is a prime example of a 90s studio cash-in that doesn't understand its own source material. It strips away the charm of the cartoon and replaces it with frantic pacing and low-brow gags.
Unless your kid is specifically going through a 'robots and gadgets' phase, you can skip this. It's not just dated—it's genuinely not very good. There are better ways to spend family movie night than watching a movie that critics and audiences almost universally panned.
Best for kids aged 6 to 9 who just want to see things blow up and people fall down. Anyone older will likely find the script painful.
It centers on a positive relationship between Gadget and his niece, Penny, but leans heavily on mean-spirited slapstick and bathroom humor that hasn't aged gracefully.
The gadgets themselves are inherently fun for kids, but the movie's execution is formulaic and lacks the cleverness of the original source material.
Standard cartoonish peril and slapstick. There is an explosion at the start that might be a bit much for very sensitive toddlers, but it's mostly harmless fluff.
There's very little here beyond low-brow entertainment. It doesn't offer much in terms of ethics, problem-solving, or emotional growth.
Before every cartoon was getting a gritty reboot, we had the era of 'wacky' live-action adaptations like this one. Inspector Gadget (1999) falls into the trap of thinking that more is better. More gadgets, more sound effects, more frantic energy. But in the process, it loses the simple, bumbling charm of the original show.
Matthew Broderick is fine as the lead, but the script gives him very little to work with other than being a human prop. The film relies heavily on physical comedy that feels more exhausting than funny. For a modern kid, the visual effects are going to be the biggest hurdle. We've reached a point where even low-budget YouTube creators have better compositing than a 1999 Disney blockbuster.
If you're looking for something in this vein that actually works, you're better off showing them the original animated series or even something like Spy Kids, which nails the gadget-fun vibe with much better storytelling.
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