Cheap Inspector Gadget 2 (DVD) (Alex Zamm) Price

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Customer Reviews of Inspector Gadget 2

The kids will love it!
With bold cartoon colors and gadgets and gizmos a plenty, this will keep the kids entertained for hours and hours as they play it over and over again. This time round Inspector Gadget is played by French Stewart - he's just perfect for this role - he's boldly cartoonish and so clumsy you just can't help but love him. His antics and gadget 'glitches' will make you laugh and the special effects really bring it to life. With everything from eye-popping spring loading gadgets to the return of the much loved wise-talking Gadgetmobile.

This one is especially for the kids - with a very welcomed 'G' rating - The DVD is packed with extras that even the Mum's and Dad's will enjoy, such as the bloopers and deleted scenes. I've already preorderd one for my niece's birthday - she's 7 and a big fan of the Inspector Gadget cartoons. - I know this won't disappoint.

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Average
I saw this for the first time on the weekend, and while it's not really as bad as some would have you believe, it isn't that great, either.
To start with, it's hard to equate Matthew Broderick's Gadget, with the character played by French Stewart. Broderick put real life into Gadget, where Stewart played Gadget purely as a 2 dimensional cartoon character for 90% of the movie. The only time he came to life was near to the end, when Claw kidnapped Penny.
Just for the record, I thought that was a nice throw-back to the original cartoon. Penny was forever getting caught by MAD agents, though she was usually rescued by Brain, and not Gadget.
The emphasis on the glitches in Gadget's circuitry was a little confusing. In the cartoon, the so-called glitches were usually his gadgets doing the thinking for him. The Inspector was such a lame-brain (and I mean that in the fondest way) that he inevitably called on the wrong gadget for whatever situation he was in. So whenever a gadget popped out that was different to the one he called for, you could be fairly sure it was the right one to do the job.
In this movie, the glitches were just that - glitches.
And then, there's Claw. Rupert Everett did a fantastic job of playing Claw in the first film. It didn't matter that his face wasn't hidden, as was the case in the cartoon. It was pointless that they tried to do that in the second film. Aside from the shockingly awful voice, what they ended up with was an 'evil' version of Wilson from Home Improvement. It was just plain sad, given Everett's deliciously wicked performance in the original.
I'm not totally sure what to think of Elaine Hendrix's performance as G2. I suppose it was fine when you consider that she is basically supposed to be an emotionless android who slowly comes alive as the film progresses, but how can you feel anything for a character that is little more than a piece of wood for most of the movie? Like French Stewart's Gadget, she only came alive towards the end of the film, and by then it was too late.
There are positives to the movie. Unfortunately, there just aren't enough.
One is the fact that Penny is given considerably more importance in this movie. In the first, she was more of a sidekick than anything else, and that rankled the hardcore fans quite a bit.
The special effects were okay, but I'm afraid that's all I can say.
As an Aussie, it was interesting to see two Aussie actors hamming up the roles of Chief Quimby and the Mayor (Mark Mitchell and Sigrid Thornton, respectively), but even they didn't give the film much of a lift.
As another reviewer commented, one blessing was that the voice of the Gadgetmobile was the same. Unfortunately there just aren't enough other redeeming features to save what could have been a wonderful movie.

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Oh, the humanity... er, cyborgity!
A little known tidbit about the history of Philadelphia: Channel 48, once known under the call letters WKBS, liquidated their assets in 1983 due to increasing problems with their transmitter lease. The station signed off on August 29 -- but not before going out with a bang. Using the last of their resources, their final half-hour was used to broadcast the first episode of a never-before-seen cartoon, one that would serve to change, in it's own small way, the cultural landscape of America.

That cartoon was Inspector Gadget. (Incidentally, a Google search of the program's airdates lists the earliest known broadcast of the series as September 5, 1983. Channel 48 may not have bothered to log it's final program to the FCC -- but trust me, I was there. They had it first.)

The continuing adventures of the bumbling cybernetic detective hold a special place in my heart because of this strange and fateful day. Channel 48 was a beloved station -- for many of my school years they broadcast Pink Panther for two hours every day(!) as well as such wonderous cult 'toons as Tenessee Tuxedo. It was a crushing blow to my young heart to bid farewell to that old, treasured friend, but their maverick decision to end with the very first broadcast of Gadget was an fond, fitting tribute.

I watched Gadget on Channel 17, who picked it up the following year, religiously. Often I would rush home from school, determined not to miss the antics of the robotic constable, the case-cracking skills of his behind-the-scenes niece Penny and her dog Brain, and the sinister growl of the menacing Doctor Claw: "I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, GADGET!"

So it was with a deep and abiding love that, when I spotted this film on the used DVD rack at my local record shop, I gladly forked over the twelve bucks to revisit my childhood one last time.

But instead, I ended up feeling like my inner child had been spanked and sent to bed without dinner. Dear Lord, this movie is terrible. Really, truly, terrible. Not a single redeeming quality about it. French Stewart may be the worst comedic actor known to humanity, accurately desribed by a friend of mine as "Like Kramer from Seinfeld, except not funny" -- I honestly think Carrot Top would have been a better choice, and I HATE Carrot Top. And though Eliane Hendrix provides that safe Disney level of mildly enticing sex appeal, her patently robotic acting is only barely forgiven by the fact that, well, she's LITERALLY playing a robot. And that incessantly unfunny car! Can we please have a modern comedy which doesn't try to infect some form of satirically cliched, urbanized Chris Rock Lite stupidity into it? Tupac is rolling over in his grave right now!

It's terrible. Disney has once again ruined the beloved characters of literary history, as they did with Hercules, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Little Mermaid. Maybe I'm reaching a little there by putting Gadget in such notable, royal company, but if in my passion I take such liberties, I beg you all to forgive me my indulgence -- certainly it's not nearly as insulting as the liberty that Eisner and company have taken in turning our favorite stories into Technicolored tripe.