Review: ‘Spy Kids’ is a double-0 negative

Geoff Carter

Thursday, March 29, 2001 | 8:59 a.m.

Spy Kids

Grade: One and one-half stars

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara.

Screenplay: Robert Rodriguez.

Director: Robert Rodriguez.

Rated: PG for cartoon-like violence and brief language.

Running time: 90 minutes

There were children at the "Spy Kids" screening. Lots of them. I don't have children myself and under normal circumstances a screening full of kids annoys me to no end -- yak, yak, yak. Being one of those obnoxious bachelor sorts that's yet untouched by the breeding urge doesn't help matters.

But I was happy to see children at the screening for a children's movie. They'd have a bead on "Spy Kids" within seconds. It'd be like writer/director Robert Rodriguez was Ernst Stavro Blofeld and the kids were James Bond, and Blofeld was just a witty quip away from being thrown into a pool of sharks. The kids would have their say, man!

But alas: They loved "Spy Kids" -- every last awkward second. They loved Antonio Banderas' fake mustache. They loved the scatological humor. They loved the grotesque whimsy of children's television show host and part-time megalomaniac Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming) and his all-too-plausible crew of colorful, "Teletubbies"-like mutants. They even loved the forced sentimentality at the end of the movie -- come on, now, what self-respecting kid would fall for that schmaltz?

All of them, apparently. Not that you can blame them. Who wouldn't want to believe that their father (Banderas) is a really a decommissioned secret agent? That your mother and uncle (Carla Gugino and a misused Cheech Marin) are lethal spies? And that the children's television show they watch religiously is the cornerstone of a nefarious plot to take over the world? And that you're the only one empowered to stop it?

Rodriguez has the power to create this fantasy and retrofit it to adults. (My old man, a spy? Right on.) Instead, he takes his biggest budget ever and spins an anemic tale inside the biggest world he'll ever create.

Inhabiting a place halfway between "Willy Wonka" and "Our Man Flint," "Spy Kids" could have been brilliant whimsy -- a family film that would have held its own with anything from Disney's G-rated fun factory. ("Spy Kids" was released under the Dimension Films banner, an alias of Disney-owned Miramax.) As it stands, it's just waiting for "Harry Potter" to come barreling through the door and pitch it to the sharks.

There are brief flashes of smarts, most of them in the eyes of the movie's young stars. Even as unnecessary special effects threaten to push them back (a fate that befalls Banderas and Gugino), Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara hold steady and turn in solid performances. Even I felt a brief rush watching the kids stroll out of a store garbed in "Matrix" duds, cool as can be, enjoying the slow motion that goes with wearing long coats in action films.

Both are fine -- better than the adults, even the usually dependable Cumming and the superlative Tony Shalhoub, wasted as Floop's henchman. Sabara, in particular, has a good run ahead of him. He's quiet, centered and no-nonsense -- everything James Bond should be.

Rodriguez proves the greatest disappointment. He has worked under similar conditions before, with greater success: His segment for the anthology film "Four Rooms" was a masterwork of good-natured comic destruction. Take Antonio Banderas in perfect form as a finger-snapping, psychotic Ricky Ricardo, add two disobedient children, throw in Tim Roth as a hapless bellboy and leave them all in a single hotel room to stew.

To this day, it's Rodriguez' strongest commercial work. You can hardly blaming him for trying to squeeze "Spy Kids" out of it, but there's just not enough there to make more than a nibble for the sharks. Kids may eat it up though, as they do anything doused with a bucket of sugar.