Product: Inspector Gadget
Company: Disney DVD
Review By: Byron Hinson
Price: $20:99

Aspect Ratio	Regional Information		DVD Disc Details
1.85 : 1 Letterbox	1 : USA	NTSC	Closed Captioning: CC Master format: Film Sides: 1 (SS-SL) Chapter stops: 13 Average Bit Rate: 6.5 Running Time: 78 Mins

Sound:	English
	5.1
Subtitles:

Inspector Gadget was one of my favorite cartoons on TV when I was younger, it was different, funny and had some ingenious gadgets to keep kids amused, so when I first heard of a big screen version I wondered who they would get to play Gadget, stars such as Robin Williams and Jim Carrey jumped into my head. Then I heard Matthew Broderick had been chosen and despite Broderick being one of my favorite actors, I was a little disappointed with the choice.

The story is based around the character of security guard John Brown, one night when John is trying to catch the person who murdered the father of "brilliant" scientist Dr. Brenda Bradford played by former Ellen regular Joely Fisher, he comes up against Dr. Claw played in an overly camp way by Rupert Everett. John almost loses his own life and the robotics expertise of Dr. Bradford is put to the ultimate test of transforming John into Inspector Gadget. The film follows Gadget getting used to all of his new found tricks while trying to catch Dr. Claw.

The movie does manage to capture the gadget side of the inspector very well, but there is little or no real comedy involved in it and it doesn't follow the way the cartoon characters were at all, Gadget used to be bumbling and cocky but not he's just left to be occasionally bumbling but never cocky. I actually found that end credits were more enjoyable than most of the film.

How It Grades
		Picture Quality: 78% Sound: 80% Special Features: 70% Movie Overall: 65% DVD Overall: 70%

The DVD itself isn't amazingly bad like most Disney releases, it isn't Anamorphic (Nothing from Disney is right now - although the forthcoming Sixth Sense will be) and doesn't have a bulk load of added extras either, just a short featurette and a music video. The DVD-Video isn't bad considering it is non-anamorphic but there are some clear artifacts showing up during the film. Sound is probably the best feature on the Disc, always clear and well produced...All in all I can only really recommend it to ardent fans of the cartoon series and to 4-8 year olds who might get some kind of fun out of it.