i'll admit to watching the early 1980's `inspector gadget' cartoon , and probably far too late in life . looks like now i'm waaaaay too old for this kind of thing , but judging by the mute stares of the many children in our advance screening audience , maybe they are too . inspector gadget – the live-action version starring matthew broderick in a thankless slapstick role – tries so hard to be funny , aiming alternately at kids and their parents , that it misses on all counts . in one scene , gadget will grab some guy's crotch until he squeals . in the next , the evil dr . claw ( everett ) will pontificate on how his moniker is `one word , like madonna . ' do kids get the subtlety of the joke , considering everett is openly gay ? do adults think it's funny ? nix on both counts , and the super-streamlined plot line ( john brown is injured and becomes superhuman crime-fighting machine ) is stolen completely from robocop . how's that for your average kiddie movie ? two funny items of note earn gadget its half-star . first is the minion recovery group scene , which appears during the closing credits . second is actually up front , when a `yahoo ! ' billboard crushes claw's limo . considering that disney's go network is now an arch-rival of yahoo ! , the free advertising for the competition ( which likely wasn't an issue during the movie's original production ) seems particularly ironic . 
