Spy Kids
Released: 2001
Length: Approx. 88 minutes (thankfully!)
Rated: PG
Main Cast: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Teri Hatcher, Mike Judge, Cheech Marin.
It’s a Dimension film (I think)! "Whoa!" you say; "That’s Disney fair." You’re quite correct! And it’s pretty dumb Disney junk too…
We watch as a couple of kids get put to bed and listen to their mom’s (AKA: Ingrid Cortez [Carla Gugina]) story about two spies from opposing organizations and countries who fall in love after disobeying orders and thus, get married. The special effects for the "action" sequence of their wedding are off. It’s almost like the film gets jerky with all the junk they superimposed over the original stock. It looks fake, and it doesn’t make you feel anything for the characters. I guess I’d call the scene STUPID!!!
It turns out to be a true story (duh!) and the kids’ parents, though retired, still communicate with their old organization(s). They want to go on one more mission and they do, after around 10 years of not going on one and thus, they’re promptly captured. I don’t know how they got Antonio Banderas to play as the father, because it’s a lousy part. Most of the time is spent watching the kids try to rescue the parents!
Well, the parents don’t get captured until after dropping off the kids at school and arranging for one of their friends to watch them, ‘Uncle’ Felix (Cheech Marin). Juni (Daryl Sabara), doesn’t get along with his older sister, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and enjoys watching some weird show that makes "TellyTubbies" look normal. It’s called something like "The Floop Show." It’s got some strange looking mutant things like Thumb-men and what-not and the host looks and acts suspiciously like Willy Wonka.
Of course, this show relates to the story. It turns out that the spies’ own organization is working for Floop (Alan Cumming), who actually works for another guy and they are taking spies and changing them into those mutants. The kid’s parents mission was to find out what happened to their spy comrades, since they’d disappeared. Floop, or his boss Mr. Minion (Tony Shalhoub) wants to make some robot children to take over the world.
The thumb people break into the kid’s home and their ‘Uncle’ gets them into a boat/sub that takes them to safety. Of course, the kids figure out how to run the thing almost from the moment they get into it. Yes, it does go into and out of auto-pilot, but they still do a decent job of controlling it…
Eventually, their parent’s organization tracks Juni and Carmen down and tries to retrieve an electronic brain. One of the thumb men gets it, I think, and then takes off in a backpack. Now, I don’t know how a Thumb-man knew how to run the thing, especially considering that they’re too dumb to catch a ball. I also don’t understand how Carmen also knew how to run one of those backpacks better than anyone else. These kids didn’t know their parents were spies, but they knew how to operate the equipment! The backpack is the most glaring act of stupidity in the movie! The Thumb-men could have been trained or something, but the kids? Come on!
Anyway, the kids find their father’s brother ‘Machete’ (Danny Trejo) who won’t help them. But he makes a lot of neat gadgets, which the kids take. They also steal his jet, which was something they’d obviously do. They managed to figure out how to drive it in one night even though the manual was somewhere in the 1000+ page range. They don’t fly it that well, but well enough to get them there.
They get in, and they chat with the mutants…Floop really isn’t bad, just misguided and Juni helps him to figure out a way to redeem himself. I’m skipping a lot, but there’s too much dumb stuff to cover. They grab Minion and mutate him, but they still have to deal with his kid-robot army. Floop runs off to try to reprogram them…so, when the spies and their kids bust in to find the buyer of the robots with Minion and his cohorts, they have to wait as something like 500 robots come to take them down. This is pretty dumb too, as it looks like there’s maybe 100, if that. And Uncle Machete jumps through a window at the last minute to help them fight the robots, but he doesn’t know why he came and no one explains how he found them!
Of course, the robots get reprogrammed at the last minute and they play a tossing game with the baddies.
Finally, we get the family message that I’ll paraphrase here: "A family if worth fighting for." Also, the spies get a message from their organization requesting the kids to go on a mission right before we get this wonderful message. Oi!
The Good Stuff:
 | I thought some of the special effects were kind of cool…and Floop’s fortress was the most interesting part! |
| There is a positive message…but it’s stuffed down the craw! |
The Bad Stuff:
| There’s swearing in a family movie… |
| Potty humor |
LAME-O Stuff:
| The first two robots are made to look like Carmen and Juni. Is this a cost cutting measure for the film or is it just dumb? You decide! |
| The kids are geniuses! |
| The bad guys are dumber than dirt! |
| Look out! Teri Hatcher acts really poorly in this movie and her hair-do is NOT something that you want to look at for very long! |
It’s obvious: I think this movie was dumb. It wasn’t terrible, but it’s only worth a rental if that. In fact, if your library has it, get it there. Don’t spend money on it!
STORY: 
VIOLENCE:
SEXUAL CONTENT: N/A
SFX: 1/2
LANGUAGE:
OVERALL SCORE: