There's an art to making a good kids' action film. This film apparently missed it completely. Making a film out of Inspector Gadget was always going to be a tough call. And they did it by making some really stupid plot changes that make it make no sense at all and removing 90% of the vaguely cool bits. But worse yet is that every single time it looks like the film is about to have some energy...it doesn't.

There is Evil Scientist Guy, who turns out to be called Scolex, although we don't find that out immediately. There is Cute Scientist Girl, who's called Brenda. Scolex somehow kills Brenda's father and does evil stuff. Bumbling Cop is sent to investigate. He chases Scolex in his car. Scolex blows him up. When he does, a bowling ball, which was in Bumbling Cop's car for no clear reason, flies out of it on a perfect trajectory to go through the sunroof of Scolex's car and hit him in the hand. Because of this, Scolex gets his hand replaced with...a claw. Except it doesn't look even slightly threatening. It looks like a really bad robot arm or a fairground grabbing arm. In the series, the Claw was a really cool guy with a growly voice, and his claw was all we ever saw of him. Here we find that The Claw is just a regular businessman in a suit with a really stupid artificial hand.

Bumbling Cop, meanwhile, has been dragged back to the police station. Brenda decides that since they need to give him surgery to save him that she'll use him as a guinea pig for the project her father was working on before he died. You guessed it. "The Gadget Project." So, they install all this hardware on him, without any sort of consent. Next up is one of the most bizarre scenes in the entire film. Brenda is supposed to be teaching Bumbling Cop, now Gadget, how to use his gadgets. She tells him to, "Just say, 'Go Go Gadget,' followed by the name of the device." In the series, when Gadget was just a crackpot inventor, this kind of made sense, because he was a crackpot. Now that Gadget is supposedly a scientist-designed and police-sponsored crimefighting machine, it doesn't. Even Gadget himself says that. Brenda's reaction is to wail and say that she just wants to see her father's dream realized. So her father dreamt of a robot cop who'd have to act like an idiot and telegraph every action in order to use his special abilities. Right. The weirdness of the scene doesn't end there, though. "So, say two guys are running out of a store they've robbed, and you want to trip them up. What do you say?" Gadget's entirely reasonable guess is: "Go Go Gadget Oil Slick." Sure enough, an oil pipe sticks out of Gadget's coat and sprays Brendawith a bright blue fluid which she immediately identifies as toothpaste. TOOTHPASTE!? The two start giggling wildly like kids and falling over. Gadget apparently never bothers to panic that he's just had major surgery performed on him by scientists who managed to put toothpaste in the oil reservoir, or that the gadget is evidently useless because it made *him* fall over as well. No, this scene of these two rolling about on the floor covered in toothpaste is supposedly some kind of romantic flirting between the two. Yipes.

Gadget then goes to some stereotyped Indian spiritual bloke who tells him how to "focus his mind." He screws up. Then Gadget goes around busting crimes in various silly ways. He goes to a party, where he shows his affection for Brenda by eavesdropping on her conversations using his gadget ear which he can take off and pin to walls. The fact that it's not the least bit inconspicuous doesn't seem to bother him. Scolex then decides that he wants to steal the chip which allows Gadget to function as a cyborg. Eventually, he kidnaps Gadget and steals the chip. Then he gets his goons to dump Gadget's body on the tip. Why did he want the chip? Apparently, he wanted to create an evil clone of Gadget, who promptly starts rampaging around the city breaking things. The clone doesn't look or act much like Gadget, apart from wearing the same things. Furthermore, the clone is described as being a robot rather than a cyborg, which makes you wonder exactly what Scolex wanted the chip for (as well as how many more times this plot device is going to get used).

And then there is another dose of pure weirdness. Brenda goes up to Scolex's labs looking for the chip. While there, she meets a robot clone of herself. Question of the moment. Why would Scolex want to clone Brenda? To get at her knowledge? Perhaps. To be a cute sidekick? Also, perhaps. Well, here's what happens. Clone Brenda proceeds to act in a ridiculously stereotyped girly fashion and follows Brenda around the office. Real Brenda refuses to converse with her as much as possible, basically just politely ignoring her. Then clone Brenda and real Brenda walk out onto the roof of Scolex's skyscraper, where, for no apparant reason, clone Brenda jumps up on a platform and announces that she was programmed to be a cheerleader. (WHAT!?) She then demonstrates this, and in doing so, backflips off the roof, killing herself. And that's it, she's dead. Brenda hasn't had any interaction whatsoever with her clone other than just nodding to her and putting up with her. And WHY would Scolex want a CHEERLEADER, for heaven's sake?

Anyway, Brenda fails to find the chip, and so they decide to go get Gadget's body back from off the tip. She, together with Penny and Brain, who are actually in the film, go and find his body on the tip. They all look sad and miserable. Then Gadget wakes up. Everyone cheers. Brenda is amazed that he doesn't need the chip. Meanwhile, the entire audience is amazed that what looked to be an important plot point was just resolved magically with no explanation. Bye, bye, energy.

Now that Gadget's back in shape, Brenda gives him the Gadget Mobile, a car whose AI is smarter than the human Gadget and which immediately sees he's a rookie, says it doesn't need him, and starts driving him at high-speed around the city to try to throw him out of the cab, until he suggests, "We could work together," whereupon it stops rebelling, in spite of its earlier objections. This car is the most ANNOYING thing in the film, since it constantly seems to have everything on hand and has the most irritating voice ever.

Meanwhile, the evil clone Gadget has been causing more mayhem. Then, real Gadget and clone Gadget meet up for a fight on a bridge. They fight for a while, not doing anything really memorable, before we hit another surreal moment. Clone Gadget and Good Gadget are standing on a high ledge. Good Gadget hears that Scolex has kidnapped Brenda during the fight, so he needs to get done quickly. He gives every bit the classic cinematic impression that he's about to strike the final blow: they've stopped for a second, they're in a nice dramatic location, and so on. "You know how they say nice guys finish last?", asks Gadget. The clone grunts. "Well, they were wrong! Go Go Gadget Oil Slick!", replies Gadget. The pipe shoots out and shoots a bit of toothpaste on the clone. That's all it does. Then they start fighting again just like they were before. Gadget beats evil Gadget and then takes off on his Gadget-copter to catch Brenda, who is being held in a helicopter by Scolex. Gadget grabs the chopper's undercarriage and then considers how to beat Scolex.

Here's how he does it. He holds out his hand and unscrews part of his finger. Then we hear an echo of the stuff that the Indian spiritual guy was saying earlier about focusing his mind. Then Gadget shoots a string out of his finger into the window of the chopper. It bounces around and hits Scolex's artificial claw, which promptly goes haywire. Brenda jumps out of the chopper, and Scolex, unable to fly the chopper, crashes. That's your final encounter. Ah, but Gadget and Brenda are still falling fast out of the sky! So it's time to use a gadget to save them! But what's the phrase to use to activate a suitable device? Gadget doesn't know. Brenda apparently doesn't know either, even though her father built the system, she supervised the installation of it, and she was teaching him to use it at the beginning. Gadget's first guess: "Go Go Gadget Air Brakes." Right. He eventually gets the right idea, and tries the -- we would think -- completely reasonable "Go Go Gadget Parachute." But no, it's not that. What is it? Well, it's "Go Go Gadget Parasol." Yes, the guys who built him actually thought it would be more useful for him to have a lame multicolored pop-up umbrella than a proper parachute.

So Gadget is drifting out of the sky like Mary Poppins and lands in the yard. The chief of police arrives and wants to know why Gadget was causing all the mayhem in the police station. Of course, that wasn't Gadget, it was the clone Gadget. Gadget tells him this. He believes it immediately. Guess all the crooks will remember THAT for next time they're busted, huh?

We finish with Gadget romantically cuddled up with Brenda, with a rocket flying around the house. But that's not the end. What we have to come are a whole sequence of bizarre set pieces that interrupt the credits, including a lengthy monologue by the blasted Gadget Mobile, a scene of robot Brenda attempting to do an aerobics routine and smashing through the floor, and, arguably the best one, Penny using a headset to contact Brain the dog and saying, "Hello, Brain, can you hear me?" Brain actually answers. And he answers in the voice that the ORIGINAL Inspector Gadget in the series had, which only serves as a reminder that the film is far inferior.