Spy Kids (2001)

Spy Kids is a film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. I remember sitting in the hall some 12 years ago watching the 3rd part of this franchise. That happened to be my first 3D film. So since I had no clue as to what I was watching that time, I didn't like the film that much. So I fortunately came across the first part which was being aired on TV a few days ago. And I can safely say that I didn't like it.Plot: Carmen and Juni decide to take matters on their own hands when their parents who happen to be ex spies get kidnapped.Story and direction: This film had quite a good story in its place. I can atleast give it credit for that. And its starts quite well. I was kind of engrossed in it. I felt like the flashback scene was to be the only over the top thing in this entire film. But then it happens to go on. I can understand when a film is being made for kids and we have to add some illogical sequences. BUt this film has a lot of them. And the VFX. Oh My God. How much green screen and so fake. Films before Spy kids had much better VFX. I know that the budget was very less. I always think when you can't do great VFX, just put that thing away. And the fight scenes are so wire-y. Almost every fight scene looked fake. This film kind of irritated me. Also we have a more over the top villain who stays in some CGI-ed castle. I would say that Danny Elfman was mostly the saving grace for this film because the score was quite enagaging.Performances: Antonio Banderas was good. But he has done better than this. Carla Gugino was OK. The kids were great in their roles as most of the concentration was them and they did justice to what was given to them. Alan Cumming and Tony Shalhoub were so over the top that they became irritating over a point of time. Same goes to Teri Hatcher. Danny Trejo was a good addition to the film.I can't actually mention any scene that would be my favorite.Verdict: This film is for Kids only. If you are mature enough, you can quite avoid this venture. I am going with a 5.5/10

Honestly, I don't know where to start. I first saw this movie when I was nine years old, and it insulted my intelligence then. Having just seen a few fragments recently while my younger siblings were watching it, I decided to do a comprehensive criticism of exactly WHY it was so terrible. And let me tell you, there are plenty of reasons. Here are my top three.Number One: StoryOkay, so the concept of "Parents were spies, kids find out, have to rescue parents before plot to take over the world is successful," isn't actually ALL terrible. It has some holes, and is admittedly pretty cheesy, but isn't so bad, if executed right. Unfortunately, this movie wasn't executed right, for several reasons. First off, where the Tartarus did the script writer get the gods-awful idea to make the villain a kids TV show star?!? Yes, a sadistic, Burton-esque, disturbing kids show which uses mutated spies as it's actors, (more on that later) but seriously? What the heck? I seriously want to know what Muse (or lack thereof) whispered in your ear to have produced this bizarre monstrosity. Why did you choose to make the generic, faceless henchmen into THUMB PEOPLE? Why is your army of indestructible automatons disguised to look like children? Why did you have to make his base a fun house that seemed to have been designed by MC Escher in the middle of the ocean? Why are your supercomputers designed to look like little deformed cyborg brains? (perhaps to resemble the minds of the producers of this movie?) WHY?!? *Ahem, sorry.* Second reason: this movie brought the art of the cliché to an all-new level. Seriously, when my friend and I were watching this, we literally predicted EVERY plot twist. Keep in mind that we were nine-year-olds."Oh look, there's a bad guy who serves the Demon Tellytubbies show guy! I'll bet he's the REAL bad guy, and has some connection with their parent's past!" or "Oh, look, they introduced Uncle Machete, but he doesn't want to help. I wonder how long we'll last until he shows up to save the day?" And so on and so forth. In all, they could have done WAY better with the storyline, which was pretty much just crap.Number Two: Special FX Really guys, did you even try to make these effects look real? I'm all for CG animation, but honestly, you could have gotten better animation results from my 11th grade Graphic's Design class, and we were only using Photoshop! For example, during the scene when Mom and Dad Cortez drove their submarine car off a cliff, there was a glaringly visible change from real car to CG-ed car. All of the other fanciful technology (Escape Sub, Jetpacks, Thumb-Thumbs, Movie Room in Fruit-Loop Guy's castle, etc) was obviously green-screened. The lighting and shading was all off, the coloration was garish, gaudy, and generally crappy, and overall, the animation looked like a bunch of circus clowns came in and covered everything in overly polished balloon latex. It looked that fake. And don't get me started on the crummy rubber suits they did for the mutated spies. Really peoples? To quote the internet term, "DERP." Number Three: Psychological Damage I swear, as a nine-year old, this movie didn't die in my mind easily. Even now, many many years later, it still disturbs me. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I saw Lord of the Rings around the same time, and the grisly orcs didn't even make me bat an eye. Yet the Burton-esque feel to the main villain was just too much for me, and the floating eyeballs, mutated dudes with their overly happy squeaking and tittering, and tinkly music-box music didn't help. Seriously, overly cheerful and bizarre kids shows are the stuff of nightmare. It seems like they went all out to make this particular aspect as weird and disturbing as possible, and I really can't understand why. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't SCARY or intense or thrilling like a spy movie should be, it was just WEIRD. Sort of the creepy weirdness that's usually associated with clowns or carousel music. It just felt out of place and frankly, I'm surprised no-one else has sued this company for psychologically scarring their kids. I don't know how to describe it, I just was seriously weirded out by this factor.In all, this movie is scraping the barrel when it comes to entertainment, which is why I'm depressed that some relatively prominent actors like Antonio Banderas lowered their dignity and restating by participating in this blot on the name of film. Maybe they signed on before they realized what they were getting into, I don't know. The acting was the only commendable part of this film, which frankly wasn't much to work with. Kudos to you, the actors for a good effort, but not good enough to salvage this shipwreck. My only thought is that the gods must hate humanity to allow this monstrosity to exist. Which gods, you ask? ALL THE GODS! May mercy be had upon the souls of those who spawned forth this crime against art.

Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids is a perfectly rounded, perfectly harmless adventure film; a piece that will no doubt play to an audience consisting of parents of whatever age whom happen to have kids around about similar ages to that of what the kids characters therein are. Feeding off of two separate strands, children will no doubt be consumed in the undying pleasures one equilibrium offers when two infants, one male and one female but brother and sister all the same, bicker and argue with each other as they journey on the adventure of a lifetime; essentially undertaking a quest which will see them strive to save the day and do the grown-ups a favour for a change in bailing them out of the trouble they get themselves in. The scenes and sequences are harmless enough for youngsters to enjoy and brief and charming enough for the adults seeing it with their kids to enjoy; the second strand consisting of the grown ups ambling along with parental life and cracking tired "Oh, aren't we both getting old!" gags which will no doubt induce grins onto that of the faces of thirty-something mums-and-dads watching on with an arm around each other and one of their two tots on either side of them.The problem being, and if like me, you land somewhere in the middle of all of this demographic pandering as a non-child whom isn't a parent and doesn't have any kids, chances are Spy Kids will be a bit of a chore; a film whose success rate in this case relies on it being an interesting and engaging enough adventure piece, something it isn't necessarily and thus doesn't quite pull through; a piece bordering on that of a monumental drag as it shuffles along doing its best to encompass people from better films that you've probably seen – by the end, I was having more fun mentally ticking off those whom had before worked with the aforementioned Rodriguez and were present here than I did from the film itself. For the Folks: if your kids answer you correctly after having turned to them post-credits in order to offer them a pop-quiz on what the only other film George Clooney and Robert Rodriguez had previously worked together on, chances are you're a pretty irresponsible parent.Joking aside, the film does offer up a meek if somewhat interesting study on how to utilise teamwork and one's skills for that of good, honest and upstanding means yadda,yadda, yadda; the film effectively a tale about two nippers seemingly at war with each other coming together to foil a common enemy through hard work, dedication and working together explored in a manner which is a bit better than dull but not really as good as 'slightly interesting' - although it is done so in a rapid, punchy manner tots will enjoy. Where the kids have what is for them, everybody else will observe the ridiculously photogenic parents of the two titular Spy Kids in Antonio Banderas' Gregorio and Carla Gugino's Ingrid Cortez, respectively; two people living a seemingly normal life (whatever 'normal' constitutes in this film) in an isolated cliff-top villa hiding out as retired spies now trying to function as office workers and keeping their previous incarnations private from their offspring.Those kids are Carmen (Vega) and the younger Juni (Sabara), two more often than not at each others' throats in that innocent enough way brothers and sisters this age usually are; Juni's existence somewhat lowlier than Carmen's in that he appears weak and is easily victimised, sports warts on his hands and is disenchanted with school life. His escape from this life is that of the transporting of himself into that of the world of television; specifically, a show headed up by Alan Cumming's suitably nasty and suitably sadistic, but wholly within the boundaries of the film, Fegan Floop; a man with a colourful and joyous TV show featuring all manner of wacky characters; sets and ideas.These circles of characters will come to integrate with one another much more later on; Floop's surface existence masking something more underneath running parallel, when he's later revealed as essentially that of an arms-dealer, with that of Carmen and Juni's parents whom additionally subscribe to a cloaked living that is similar only in nature. The catalyst which kick-starts the titular kids' adventure out into the unknown; a journey encompassing the learning to co-exist with one another; the realisation of what it means to take on certain responsibilities and Juni's own realisation of the true meaning of Floop's show, which he holds so dear to him, occurs when parents Gergorio and Ingrid are swiped by an unknown quantity. From here, surprises and revelations whisk the pair off on an espionage and action imbued adventure featuring bad guys; double crosses; sordid plots and a lot of humour revolving around fully grown adults falling down. Where it's easy to sneer, and boy is it easy to sneer at Spy Kids, it is on the other hand difficult to get as excited about as one would have liked; Rodriguez demonstrating a knack for completely shifting gears and coming up with a piece acceptable to all ages which isn't exceptional but is a long way from woeful.Who knows? Like somebody whose introduction to Brian de Palma was in the shape of 1996's Mission: Impossible as however young I was; maybe, in years to come, youngsters whom saw this with their folks and have such happy memories of it will discover what else Rodriguez has to offer, before quietly exclaiming that they find it hard to believe such a film here was even made by the man – let alone was their introduction to his back-catalogue of which they've come to really admire. The world works in strange ways.

I thought Spy Kids was a pretty cool movie to watch. I did not expect much of it at first but I'm glad I saw it because I really enjoyed it. This was not the bad movie that I had anticipated. I even liked the sequel to this movie.This is about very young spies who are on a mission to save the United States, of course.The cast is pretty much an all-star cast. The spies played by Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara are pretty good. The parents played by Antonio Banderas and Carlos Gugino are wonderful.Overall, this is a good piece of work. I also like to mention that some of these gadgets are cool. I rate this film 8/10.