“Deaf as door posts, blind as bats, dumb as turkeys, squealers are rats!”

Justin’s rating: Cyber rats, you say? That’s the movie I want to see!

Justin’s review: I vaguely remember that among the different genre of toys that companies tried to push on us back in the ’90s, there was a trend of spy gadgets. You know, night vision goggles that could see at noon in broad daylight, grappling hooks that could grab on to a dust bunny, and the Talkboy from Home Alone 2. I don’t think that any of these made my friends and I into expert spymasters, but the dream was there until we discovered girls.*

But those who didn’t abandon this dream grew up to be people like Gadgetman, a dude who casually whips together things like robotic ape bodyguards that can dance and a vehicle that’s half-car and half-motorcycle. His name is actually Professor McNeil, and he’s showing up a decade too late to be included in the ’80s pantheon of wacky inventors that seemed to be in every other movie.

In a super-downbeat way to start a movie, we find out that McNeil’s wife died of cancer leaving him and his son Bean on their own. Oh, and he’s going to lose his house. Oh, and he’s also drawn the attention of thieves who want to kidnap him for his ATM-busting invention.

So when he goes missing, it’s up to Bean (who has a voice that sounds 35) and his incredibly Scottish pals** to grab the professor’s gadgets and use them to thwart the bad guys while Bean learns to live on his own for a while. My theory is that Scotland only just got Home Alone in ’96 and fell in love with it.

Because you’ll be asking, here are a list of the gizmos that make an appearance in Gadgetman:

• Headset radios
• A jet-propelled bike
• Big ol’ robot gorilla bodyguard
• Some doodad that hacks into ATMs
• A smart house where the doors are remote-controlled
• Grappling ladder/hook
• GPS

Other than being an adaption of a 1993 kids book, this TV movie only is notable for putting Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Marina Sirtis as its lead villain. She plays a detective who’s actually THE UNDERTAKER, a mastermind of the criminal sort who gets easily thwarted by children armed with gadgets and is saddled with dumb, bumbling minions. I mean, I’m happy she got some post-TNG work (she actually did great on the Gargoyles cartoon), but this is even more tepid than her Trek co-star Patrick Stewart being in his own kids-vs-adults flick.

While you’d hope that this would be a spirited rip-roaring KID POWER! adventure, the reality is that Gadgetman drags its feet everywhere that it wants to go. It’s kind of a coming-of-age story for Bean as he learns to be the true gadget guru that his dad could never be, but it takes forever in a movie that’s only 90 minutes and has at least one montage set to a schmaltzy ’80s ballad. I guess the Scottish accents — Sirtis aside — are adorable, but there’s not a whole lot here that makes this stand out. It’s fine enough as a kid adventure and well put together, but the pacing problems hold it back.

*For some reason, girls didn’t think that spying on them was adorable.

**They’re a dorky gang called the Peace Keepers. They’ve got helmets and stickers and BMX bikes. Don’t laugh, it’s more than you’ve got at this stage in your life.

Intermission!

• Those opening credits make us remember the power of motherboards and super-cheesy music
• This movie LOVES those frosted glass cubes
• TALKING ROBOT GORILLA! Who… waltzes?
• How many Scottish accents am I going to be enduring here?
• Time to watch home movies of your dead mom before your living dad tells you that he’s losing the house. Cheery!
• Half-car, half-motorcycle
• Did they just inadvertently rob a bank via ATM?
• Yay, more mother cancer talk! That doesn’t get uncomfortable!
• That’s a LOT of kids on bikes
• Kids with face paint mean business.
• Yeah, jet-propelled bikes probably will send you right into the water
• About time we had an old-fashioned torture session
• Cops provide babysitting services
• “Phantom Gran strikes again!”
• I think their house is controlled by an ’80s Macintosh
• It’s the fun scene where people keep arguing rather than doing anything useful. He could fight back or something.
• The Wastelands are only for the Cyber Rats