welve-year-old Carmen Cortez's (Vega) favorite bedtime story is the one her mom, Ingrid (Gugino), tells about the two spies who fell in love, got married and had two kids. At least, Carmen likes the story up until the part about the kids.
Carmen's 8-year-old brother, Juni (Sabara), has his own worries. He's afraid of almost everything, which results in warts that he wraps in bandages, giving him "mummy" fingers. His only joy in life is the bizarre children's show Floops Fooglies, featuring a demented Willy-Wonka-like Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming) and a collection of monsters that creep out Juni's dad, Gregorio (Banderas).
Unbeknownst to either Carmen or Juni, however, is the fact that Ingrid and Gregorio really were spies, who have since retired to a cozy cliffside home, where they act as "consultants." That is, until the OSS's chief spy, Devlin, orders them to investigate the disappearance of several field agents.
With their minivan that turns into a minisub, Mom and Dad take off to investigate. But they are almost immediately captured by Floop, who turns out to be the mastermind behind a nefarious criminal enterprise. The "Fooglies" on his show are actually OSS agents who have been captured and mutated. With his sidekick, Minion (Tony Shalhoub), Floop commands an army of "Thumb Thumb" robots.
When the Thumb Thumbs come calling at the Cortez family home, Carmen and Juni quickly learn the truth about their parents--though they can hardly believe it. "My parents can't be spies!" cries Carmen. "They're not cool enough!" Escaping to an island hideout, Carmen and Juni decide they are the only ones who can rescue their parents. But can Carmen muster enough family loyalty? And can Juni overcome his fears?
Worth staying up past bedtime for
Spy Kids comes from the fertile imagination of renegade auteur Robert Rodriguez, best known for the El Mariachi movies and From Dusk Till Dawn. Fans of those stylish and ultraviolent movies may be surprised to discover Rodriguez's deft touch with family material. But the director himself doesn't see the disconnect: His first movie, an award-winning 16mm short, was Bedhead, a family film starring his actual family.
Rodriguez aficionados will recognize many familiar faces (like the surprising cameo at the end) and the director's great visual wit: a vivid palette, balletic camera movements, an elastic sense of time and montages set against guitar music. The film also boasts fantastical production designs by Cary White that incorporate Southwestern and Latin American motifs, kind of Tim Burton dipped in ancho chile sauce.
But the joy of this highly original film is its humor, energy and heart. Rodriguez, who by all accounts is a devoted family man, set out to reinvent the spy genre as if viewed through the eyes of his 5-year-old son. The film moves at a non-stop pace. And it's clear Rodriguez hasn't forgotten what it means to be a kid.
The sibling-rivalry bickering between the two gifted child stars rings true, even when it's delivered from the cockpit of a one-man spy jet. The secret-agent gadgets are kid-friendly: electric chewing gum, acid crayons, cement silly string.
Rodriguez builds the movie around the theme of family, and makes amusing and ironic use of suburban cliches in spy context. When Mom is finally back on the job with her spymaster husband, she laments, "Our first time out in more than a decade, and all we can think about is the children."
The director also shows a creative ability to maximize the reportedly modest $36 million budget, with breathtaking action sequences on land, air and water, as well as weirdly chilling fantasy moments in the castle itself. The movie looks as good as one made for twice the money.
