I spied with my little eye a movie worth seeing called Spy Kids! Carmen and Juni Cortez’s Mom & Dad are great parents and their kids love them, but even for grown-ups they’re kind of, you know, dull. Until one day when an evil mad scientist kidnapps their parents and the kids discover that Mom and Dad use to be the two best spies in the business who only retired to get married and start a family. It also seems like Dad worked on a special project, called the Third Brain, that this scientist needs in his quest to, what else, take over the world. With Mom and Dad held captive the kids, aided with Mom and Dad’s spy gizmos, have to grow up enough to rescue them and save the world! Besides, if they do a good enough job Dad may even raise their allownace!

Spy Kids was fun, but a lot different then I expected it to be. I doubt that younger kids, those under eight, would get a lot out of it and even those kids a bit older may find it a bit odd. With huge, but clumsy, evil robots who’s heads, arms and legs are literally all thumbs; virtual reality rooms, and cybernetic `third’ brains it was much more sureal and tongue in cheek then the ads make it appear . At times it reminded me of some of the weirder episodes of the popular British science fiction series Dr. Who and at others of some of the better spy movie spoofs of the sixties such as Our Man Flint. Alexa Vega (Carmen) and Daryl Sabara (Juni), who play the ‘Spy Kids’, did great jobs and have a good chemistry with each other as well as with Carla Gugino who plays their Mom, but as their Dad Antonio Banderas doesn’t really seem to have his heart in his role. I’m sure the ladies in the audience will have fun looking at him heart or no heart, but Mr. Banderas has proven himself capable time and again of better work then he gives here. There are plenty of laughs for both the adults and kids in the audience and, all in all, this is an excellent film for families to see together.

Spy Kids is a pretty good movie for youngsters and, no kidding, adults as well!