Guerilla filmmaking has left the art houses and has successfully entered the children's market. "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams," and its enormously successful precursor, are the brainchild of famously thrifty writer-director Robert Rodriguez, who's gone from the low-budget action of "El Mariachi" 10 years ago to being an in-demand creator known for his childlike enthusiasm and ability to stretch a dollar.
Both qualities have served him well on the Spy Kids franchise, the perfect vehicle for the relentlessly inventive Rodriguez and his pleasingly juvenile outlook on life.
The concept is simple: husband and wife Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are secret agents for one of the world's top espionage agencies--and so are their kids. Precocious pre-teens Carmen and Juni (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara) take after their parents, as part of the agency's international Spy Kids program.
Loaded with all the requisite gadgets and quips, Carmen and Juni are among the best secret agents in the program, complete with sinister archrivals in the form of WASPy brother-and-sister team Gary and Gerti Giggles (Matthew O'Leary and Emily Osment). After Juni is disavowed following the theft of a mysterious device called the transmooker, he and Carmen defy the authorities and decide to clear his name by tracking down the transmooker.
This doesn't sit well with their parents, already upset by Gregorio's snub for a promotion -- a job suspiciously given to Gary and Gerti's father, Donnagon (Mike Judge, most famous as the creator of "Beavis & Butthead").
{INSERT_RELATED}Pursuing their kids in the company of Ingrid's visiting parents (including Official Coolest Man on Earth Ricardo Montalban as Grandpa), The Cortezes trace their kids -- as well as Gary and Gerti -- to a mysterious island that's home to strange monsters and a secluded scientist named Romero (Steve Buscemi).
Three generations converge on the island to unravel the creatures' mysteries, secure the transmooker, and find the thief before it's too late.
Sound strange? It is. Alternately adolescent and ... slightly less adolescent, "Spy Kids 2" barrels forward with little regard for coherency and no tolerance for more sober sensibilities to dilute its storytelling.
It's a movie that can fearlessly evoke Ray Harryhausen and Roald Dahl within minutes of a camel poop joke. It doesn't care about its shoddy CGI (literally done on Rodriguez's home computer) or other movies' more routine spy movie cool; it's a family movie made by a family -- Rodriguez regulars like Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo and Buscemi populate the cast and crew -- and it isn't afraid to do it in the way it feels best.
Eschewing hard-line morality for a less condescending, but still sincere, tone, Spy Kids 2 is a family film actually worth watching, especially if the audience is too busy having fun to be aware of the showing seams.
"Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams" opens at theaters everywhere, Wed., Aug. 7.
