Spy Kids 3-D:
Game Over
Released: 2003
Rated: PG
Length: Approx. 89 min.
Main Cast: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Sylvester Stallone, Robert Vito
Spy Kids is a very unique series. They are all rather strange and they all promote family heavily. This is in sharp contrast to other Disney movies in the fact that the other movies tend to kill off one or more of the parents.
This movie continues where the last Spy Kids 2 left off. Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) has left the OSS and become a private detective. He soon finds out that his sister, Carmen (Alexa Vega) has disappeared and the OSS wants Juni to find her. Personally, I don't understand why they didn't have Juni's parents do the deed, but whatever.
It seems that Carmen had gone into a videogame known as Game Over. She had gone in there to shut it down as the game would end up taking over the minds of the children that played it. Also, this game held its creator, the Toymaker (Sylvester Stallone) captive.
Right away you see gaping plot holes:
One of the major ones is how does a guy make the game that holds him prisoner?
How does one shut down a game from the inside?
How does one get inside the game in the first place?
If it's shut down, how do you get back out? Is there some kind of countdown after hitting the OFF switch that let's one escape?
How does shutting down one copy of the game shut down all the other copies?
Why can the OSS manipulate the game's environment and not shut it down completely?
Anyway, Juni goes in and has to get to level four to rescue his sister within some set time limit. He meets up with some "beta testers" that help and hinder him for the rest of the show. Eventually, the testers think he is "The Guy," a very thinly-veiled euphemism relating to The Matrix. Basically, it means they think Juni is the one that will be able to lead them to victory. Juni gets his grandfather (Ricardo Montalban) in the game to help him too. Unfortunately, the grandfather only pops up now and then to save or encourage Juni. Dumb...
Juni finds his sister (finally) and they go on to level five to turn the game off. Grandfather does the deed and you think, "yay! it's over." WRONG! They just get outside the game. And for some reason, there were two switches. One turned off the game and the other freed the Toymaker. Well, grandpa had a beef to settle with the Toymaker, so he releases the goof.
Now we have the Toymaker out and about in the "real" world and he has a bunch of his robots going on a rampage. So, Juni must put a call out for all the Cortez's and his buds to come and help him defeat the robots.
Everything turns out alright at the end; so you needn't worry your little head.
The Good Stuff:
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It's in 3-D for a large portion of the show |
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The show is very family-friendly |
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The special effects were pretty good. |
The Bad Stuff:
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Some dumb violence... |
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Too many corny things happen |
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There's not enough breaks in the show. You end up with some serious eye-strain by the end of the flick. |
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Sylvester Stallone is funny (sort of), but most of the time he just can't act. |
Dumb Stuff:
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Juni meets up with a girl in the game and for some reason they end up thinking of each other as boyfriend/girlfriend. Uh...right. How does that happen? They haven't even known each other for a day!!! |
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Juni has a certain number of "lives" in the game and they go down whenever he takes damage. However, this is never consistent. Sometimes he loses one and other times it'll be two or three or more. It makes no sense!!! |
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If there was a switch in the game that would release the Toymaker, why didn't the Toymaker throw it himself? |
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I think you get the idea. |
Don't go into this movie with your brain engaged. It's just meant to be good clean fun and nothing more. If you try to think, you'll probably not like this movie very much. I thought it was cool because it was 3-D and it had some interesting takes on videogames.
STORY: 
VIOLENCE:
COMEDIC FACTOR:
SEXUAL CONTENT: (Tight
clothing on Carmen is about the only "complaint")
SFX:
LANGUAGE: N/A
ACTION:
OVERALL SCORE: