Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

Simply Perfect

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Spy Kids (2001): Dir: Robert Rodriguez / Cast: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Richard Cheech Marin: Wonderfully inventive and exhilarating experience for families. It is about little people doing big things. The special effects are totally creative with a story that is straight forward but a lot of fun. Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino are captured spies by an entertainer who mutates spies as props for his show. Gugino tells of the two spies who were suppose to eliminate each other but ultimately fell in love instead. Their children catch on quickly when villains that resemble thumbs search for a device called the Third Brain. Alan Cumming plays a villain who desires to take over the world using robotic children and the third brain is needed. Director Robert Rodriguez outdoes himself here with inventive visuals and creative gimmicks. This is a far stretch from the gory horror films he is known for such as From Dusk Till Dawn and The Faculty. Banderas and Gugino are a wonderful pairing with Alan Cumming on target as the entertainer. Tony Shalhoub plays the scheming villain. Richard Cheech Marin is an amusing edition as an uncle who is in on the big parental secret. The third act is mainly numerous action sequences that present cartoon style violence and predictable results. Otherwise this is a challenging family friendly visual delight. Score: 9 / 10

I came into Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids expecting stupidity and cliché, but I got something enjoyable and original. It's full of fun special effects and offers little crudeness like this year's previous Shrek in the way of family entertainment value. This is a likable adventure from start to finish and never tries to make itself larger than it appears to be. It's not pretending to be a cultural statement or a book of moral values. It advertises itself as slick entertainment and as a whole, it pulls it off and never really lets us down. A nice change of pace for Rodriguez, after directing a number of violent movies comes up with this most pleasing children's yarn.

I remember seeing this as a kid and really enjoying it. I really wanted to be a spy like these kids. It was pretty funny for a movie directed at kids, too. Was it a favorite of mine? No. Classic Disney movies still had the leash on me. A little while ago I saw this movie again. It didn't give me the thrills it gave me when I was a kid, of course, but I still enjoyed some parts of it. No. It's not a GREAT film. But you can definitely see effort. There was definitely creativity and effort put in this film to get a laugh, to push the story forward, to give characters different quirks and personalities. Even some of the gadgets were pretty cool (like the world's smallest camera and the bubble gum.) Overall, it's a pretty harmless film. You can show it to your kids and they'll most likely enjoy it. The sequels slowly got worse, but if your kids are REALLY into this movie and are just pleading to see the sequels, just show them the second one. The third one was pretty bad, and the upcoming fourth one just seems...well, I'm not going to say anything since I've only seen the trailer, but I don't think I would want to spend money to see it. Sorry. Got off track there. Overall, this movie is worth a rent. It's a good movie to show to your kids on a weekend or something.

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.