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Willy Wonka meets James Bond
[Photo: Dimension Films]
Carla Gugino, clockwise from top left, Antonio Banderas, Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara play the family that spies together. |
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 29, 2001
Spy Kids, full of outlandish gadgets, 007 moments and silly jokes, is a movie the targeted audience will love.
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Spy Kids is essentially a Disney movie operating with a secret identity. The movie looks, talks and quacks like a shiny Mouse House contraption, but it comes from Dimension Films, a spinoff of Miramax that is, in the ever-incestuous world of entertainment, owned by Disney.
The film's pedigree is as oddly jumbled as Spy Kids itself. The Miramax/Dimension connection introduces two unlikely players in the kid flick industry: the Weinstein brothers, who never met a provocative art film they couldn't hype, and director Robert Rodriguez, best known for bloody drama in El Mariachi, Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn.
Would you trust your children with these guys? Turns out that you can.
Spy Kids is a trippy, rambunctious blend of James Bond and Willy Wonka, a messy adventure loaded with silly jokes, incredible gadgets and a kid empowerment theme to win over young viewers. The movie doesn't effectively spoof the spy genre like Austin Powers, and its cliffhangers seem arbitrary with a plot that's too complex.
But Rodriguez plows through every gap in his script with a visionary style recalling the work of Terry Gilliam, plus his trademark flamenco rushes of varied speeds and editing. Spy Kids moves at a breakneck pace even when Rodriguez has no idea where it's heading. It's fun with no obvious purpose, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Antonio Banderas stars as Gregorio Cortez, a master spy for an anonymous agency who married Ingrid (Carla Gugino), a secret agent who had been sent to kill him. Their unlikely romance is now a favored bedtime story of their children, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara). To them, the adults are simply Mom and Dad.
Not for long. Several other agents have disappeared, nudging Gregorio and Carmen from retirement. Meanwhile, the children go to school and play as usual, both fans of a TV show hosted by Pee-Wee Hermanesque host Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming). Before long, Floop's connection to the missing agents surfaces, Gregorio and Carmen are captured and it's their children to the rescue.
From that skimpy outline, Rodriguez devises scenes rooted in classic 007 circumstances, from underwater heroics to outer space countdowns. There's a transforming item for every occasion, from jet packs to electroshock bubble gum. The bad guys, an army of mutants conceived by Floop, are mostly H.R. Pufnstuf leftovers except for an arresting sub-race of goons who are -- literally -- all thumbs.
Banderas is fine as a father figure, but his furrowed-brow handsomeness makes one wonder what he could do with a bona fide spy role. Gugino is capable but not particularly memorable. Vega and Sabara are run-of-the-mill cute, with unconvincing deliveries of some dumb lines. Cumming's fey performance is a sign of the creators' wish to make Spy Kids edgier, like their previous work, but not too much.
Older viewers will be stymied by the plot's non-development and possibly irked by the film's joystick mechanics. Children, however, should get a karate kick from Spy Kids.
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MOVIE REVIEW: Spy Kids
- Grade: B
- Director: Robert Rodriguez
- Cast: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Alan Cumming, Teri Hatcher, Robert Patrick, Tony Shalhoub
- Screenplay: Robert Rodriguez
- Rating: PG; violence
- Running time: 100 min.
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