FAMILY BOND-ING

By Greg Walton

Review Film Critic

Parents and their children share precious few mutual interests.  There's

plenty of blame to spread around.  Is it a generation gap, culture gap, or

Gap for Kids?  With Dr. Laura off the air, we may never know.  What the

world needs now is a quick fix, something that will bring kids and adults

together into the bosom of familial bliss.

Or you could just take 'em to Spy Kids, the hyped-up, lambada-ized version

of 70's Disney kid-fare like Escape from Witch Mountain, only

infinitely more hip and oh-so internet ready.

Better yet, just drop them off and enjoy a 1 1/2-hour siesta, since the

film slants heavily towards the pre teen set.

There's  a lot of eye candy in Spy Kids. And it all starts off with a

razzle-dazzle opening sequence featuring the wedding of Gregorio and Carla

Cortez (Antonio Banderas & Carla Gugino), two international spies who

exchanged their licenses to kill for a marriage license and two cutey-pie

kids Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara).  Years later, the kids

are shocked to discover their parents' secret identities when they're

kidnapped by an evil genius named Floop (Alan Cumming), who's out to

conquer the world

with an army of robotic toddlers in grey flannel jump suits.

With Mom and Dad in jeopardy, Carmen and Juni jump headfirst into the spy

game, using all the gadgets at their disposal (mini-jets, mini subs...

just think of something 007 would use and add the word mini) in a

courageous effort to save their parents, save the world, and get out of

doing their homework.  What kid couldn't  identify with that?

How much you enjoy Spy Kids depends less on your age than how many special

effects shots you can stomach in 30 seconds.  Director Robert Rodriguez

(Desperado, From Dusk  'til Dawn) never takes his foot off the gas, which

is probably a good idea since it's harder to notice the film's flaws.

Scenes start, stop, and speed by so quickly it makes MTV look like a PBS

pledge drive.

There's bunch of 'Mom, I want one of those!' sequences, like the jet pack

chase that has Carmen zipping around as a pint-sized superhero.  And plenty

of poop jokes for the kids to spread around at school.

 For adults it's pretty sparse.  There's Antonio Banderas looking

mischievous in a thin moustache and his wife strutting around in tight

leather.  As the lead villain, Cumming owes a large debt to Willie Wonka,

despite being cleverly modeled as the nightmare of parents everywhere: a

kid's TV show host.   At one point, an assistant reminds him to stop

worrying about ratings and concentrate on their evil master plan.

"Syndication?" he quips.  It's one of those smart lines that kids don't

notice but anyone who's not wearing pull-up pants appreciates immensely.

And there should have been more.

If The Grinch was a nice babysitter movie - the kind that put the kids to

bed on time and makes sure they brush their teeth - Spy Kids is the one

that lets them eat cookies on the couch, chug a two-liter of pop, then wet

the bed.  And for kids, that's a whole lot of fun - wet sheets or not.

Grade: B-

WE ARE FAMILY

Of course, such moral debauchery is too much even for the producers of Dumb

& Dumber, so it's not long before the whole mess is revealed as one big

misunderstanding.  But now Jo's on her way to the altar with a cocky,

millionaire jerk, so Gilly has to get across the country to stop the

wedding, save the groom, and stick it to his sister - or something like

that.

 It's easy to stop paying attention to such a forgettable trash comedy like

Say It Isn't So. There's a lot of sick...sick potential in the film's first

half hour, but Klein and Graham can't even out-funny Jim Carrey's talking

butt.  They're charming actors, but they're overwhelmed by overdrawn side

characters like Orlando Jones (the make 7-UP yours! guy) as an amputee

pilot who helps Gilly on his quest.

The script resorts to the now-standard gross out techniques, such as

humiliating the handicapped and sodomizing as many farm animals as

possible.

Even the lines that get a laugh, like Gilly's father's fear that the

incestual experience will turn his daughter into a 'vaginatarian' fade fast

from your memory as the romantic elements take over the last third of the

film.

 If I wanted romance, I'd go to the barn.  I mean, bar.

GRADE: D+