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Pity parents today. As a child I would await the Sears Christmas catalog all year. Come October I would call the nearest Sears on a daily basis, bugging the store's operator until that phone book-sized wish list arrived; then I would drag it home and flip through each page with the studious care of a rare-book dealer, methodically compiling a list of a few hundred action figures, Atari cartridges, and air hockey tables. The pictures sold this stuff: if it was an action figure, it was photographed in some elaborate backyard ant farm constructed to scale for action figures; if it was air hockey, it was in a rumpus room only a rich kid like Gary Coleman could own.

Thunderbirds

Directed by Jonathan Frakes; screenplay by William Osborne and Michael McCullers, based on a story by Peter Hewitt. A Universal Pictures release, opening today at Franklin Park and Showcase Maumee Cinemas, and rated PG for intense action sequences and
language. Running time: 94 minutes.

Critic’s rating: **

Jeff Tracy - Bill Paxton
Alan Tracy - Brady Corbet
Fermat - Soren Fulton
Brains - Anthony Edwards
Hood - Ben Kingsley

So pity parents today. It's a post-literate world, the Sears Christmas catalog is no more. Catalogs move now. Especially in movie theaters in the summer. I mention all that because this new kids' picture, Thunderbirds, resembles nothing less than the most elaborate holiday toy catalog since the Spy Kids trilogy. For kids and adults. There were times I wanted one of every lime green rocket - and two of every neo-retro '60s Palm Beach sectional couch the Thunderbirds relax on when they're not thunderbirding into hot spots, rescuing Teamsters from collapsing oil platforms.

The difference is, Thunderbirds feels like a hard sell, whereas Spy Kids had a knowing wit. You also get that sense of toy catalog from the posters, which feature the heroes at the bottom while their candy-colored space ships dominate; you sense it from that distinct Tonka yellow on the trucks in the film; you sense it from the way a few of the vehicles come assembled with a pea soup cannon. You sense all this because all this stuff - the pink sedans that transform into pink subs, and the hover bikes that seem ready for holiday pricing - is what you take away.

Pity the parents again. Because some of them grew up with Thunderbirds. And they've lived to see their childhoods dismantled. If you're not familiar: the irony is, this was a TV show about toys by toys. Produced in England from 1964 to 1966, and later imported here, Thunderbirds looks positively surreal today: a spy series completely performed by marionettes, whose strings were not hidden, whose submersibles, burrowing drills, and '60s modishness stole the show. One female puppet wore pink and was called Lady Penelope. She was kind of hot. For some reason, likely having to do with the imagination of the prop department, a monorail would be destroyed in every episode.

That's all I remember. But this movie is a far stranger bird, love. It's features real people, not puppets. This is a big mistake: What was unique about Thunderbirds was the puppets, the way they, uh, dangled into action, the way they stared blankly ahead. It was creepy and charming (even then). The movie tells the story of a family of men, only men (Mom having died in an avalanche years prior), who wear white NASCAR suits and fly brightly colored rockets into natural disasters and crime scenes.

The leader is Jeff Tracy (Bill Paxton), whose seemingly poreless complexion and severely parted helmet of hair resemble that of a Ken doll. He acts with the appropriate, uh, wooden sincerity. He saves the day in the first scene, but spends the film trapped on a space station, returning only for the last scene, while the rest of the movie concerns his son, Alan Tracy (Brad Corbet), who wants to be a Thunderbird but has school. So he sets out to prove he can behave like a real Spy Kid.

I mean Thunderbird.

His family (five guys, as Aryan as the Waltons, with hair sculpted by the Stray Cats) hovers somewhere between superhero fetishists and a squad of Amish Swedes who have recently discovered extreme sports. They could also be Kennedys. They live on a remote, top-secret compound where they strut around shirtless, slapping each other on the back. It's their Hyannis.

Soon their Chappaquiddick arrives. He is a man in thick eyeliner named The Hood. He wears a bathrobe with tiny dragons. He's played by Ben Kingsley. When he gets mad at Jeff Tracy, he delivers a rant of invective, finishing with the not-especially-ominous threat: "I will defeat you someday… Jeff."

Sophia Myles captures the proper wink-wink-nudge-nudge tone as Lady Penelope, the cool-as-a-cucumber-sandwich operative. The colors are goofy, the costumes mostly faithful. There's nothing to offend. I just wish I could say it was played for laughs, or even camp. Or at least deliberately stiff. The irony is, a puppet show might have been way cooler; it would have been just different, too - a back-to-the-future curio. Instead it's more kindling for the weekly pop culture furnace, while those old '60s marionettes haven't a splinter.

Contact Christopher Borrelli at: cborrelli@theblade.com or 419-724-6117.