**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Mike Judge, Steve Buscemi, Matthew O’Leary, Emily Osment, Holland Taylor, and Ricardo Montalban
Directed & written by Robert Rodriguez
2002 PG
Early on in “Spy Kids 2,” one of the swarmy spies that is competing with Our Heroes comments “a spy’s only as good as his gadgets” (actually, he probably uses the grammatically incorrect “a spy’s only as good as their gadgets,” as if the word “their” is some kind of neuter for he/she, but whatever). Not surprisingly, by the end of the film, Our Heroes have proven that it is brains and ingenuity, and not simply technology, that allow us to succeed. Odd, considering that the technology behind “Spy Kids 2” is just as good as the original “Spy Kids” from 2001, while the cleverness that made the original so enjoyable is still present but diluted.
About twenty minutes into “Spy Kids 2” I realized that I was laughing, but not as often as during “Spy Kids.” There’s not much else to say, really: both films involve the standard hokem about spies chasing a MacGuffin, both are saturated in high-tech gizmos, and both involve lots of chases and death-defying stunts. But I remember laughing almost constantly at the rapid-fire ingenuity of “Spy Kids,” and with the sequel—well, I laughed some.
Returning from “Spy Kids” are the Cortez siblings (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara), the children of spies (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino), but now spies of their own in the junior division of the OSS. The film begins with the Cortez family’s strained relations with another spy family, the Giggles, whose father (Mike Judge, creator of “King of the Hill” and “Beavis and Butthead”) has recently been named the head of the OSS. The younger Giggleses (Matthew O’Leary and Emily Osment) are mired in an unhealthy competition with the Cortezes, and their mission, which they choose to accept, is to retrieve the MacGuffin from the mysterious Island of Lost Secrets. Waiting for them on the island are all manner of monsters, including a monkey with eight legs (a spider monkey, get it?), a two-headed sea serpent, and angry skeletons. Responsible for the beasts is a mad scientist (the wonderful motormouth Steve Buscemi, of “Fargo” and “Desperado”), who is terrified of the monsters. He talks exactly like comic book characters think (“I must save them. I must!”). As before, the Cortez parents come to the aid of their offspring, this time aided themselves by a pair of their parents (velvet-voiced Ricardo Montalban and Holland Taylor). They spend most of the movie in a submarine bickering, and are of almost no consequence to the rest of the action.
“Spy Kids 2” is the second major release to be shot entirely on high-definition digital video, the first being “Attack of the Clones.” Despite the raves made by directors Robert Rodriguez and George Lucas, both films are flatter-looking and less vibrant than the more expensive and time-consuming celluloid of traditional movies. Still, “Spy Kids 2” has some delightful (and delightfully phony) visuals, including the digital monsters, many of which have been intentionally fashioned to look like the stop-motion creations of the late-great Ray Harryhausen, who was responsible for the effects in “Clash of the Titans” and “Jason and the Argonauts.” I like it when digital effects support models and erase matte lines, but I don’t like that CGI is gradually taking over and turning everything into a cartoon. Models and stop-motion beasts really aren’t any more “real” than computer-generated ghouls, but their solidness gives them a weight that CGI images lack. Maybe it’s simply an aesthetic choice on my part. Maybe when I see King Kong or Chewbacca I feel like I’m seeing something special. But a digital creation like Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” looks like just another tentacle of the same self-obsessed beast that’s always coming at me through the computer, television, and video games.
Effects aside, “Spy Kids 2” hurtles along at the same breakneck speed as its predecessor, while siblings Vega and Sabara alternately bicker or say “let’s go.” The road they follow in “Spy Kids 2” is more a straight-ahead journey than the twists and turns in “Spy Kids,” which makes me think that they should have just landed on the other side of the island. Gags which kiddies probably won’t get include the movie’s Movie President, who is such a Movie President, and the fact that Sabara carries on a romance with his pre-teen daughter while never referring to her as anything besides The President’s Daughter. I also liked the climactic waterside fistfight, perhaps in parody of “Mission: Impossible 2,” in which the combatants injure themselves severely by trying the same kung-fu moves at the exact same time.
The character arc in “Spy Kids” is for the kids to realize that their dull suburbanite parents are cool after all, and for the parents to start paying more attention to their spawn. I also got a kick out of Alan Cumming’s megalomaniac Captain Kangaroo. “Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams” lacks an arc so substantial, and is more like a long episode of an afternoon cartoon, just a part of something larger, and not quite a complete thought. There are frequent bones thrown to the grown-ups watching, but the original “Spy Kids” was genuinely more even-handed when it came to entertaining both parents and litter.
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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