Spy Kids
Tags: violence, atmospheric, clever, good versus evil, action, entertaining, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
Ingrid and Gregorio Cortez are rival spies who fall in love. They retire and have two children, twelve-year-old Carmen and nine-year-old Juni. They work for the Organization of Super Spies (OSS) doing desk work. The children have no idea of their parents' previous career. Ingrid and Gregorio are called back into the field when agents go missing. The children are left in the care of Uncle Felix Gumm. Gregorio suspects that a kids' TV show star Fegan Floop has kidnapped the agents, and mutated them into his "Fooglies," creatures on his show.
They are captured by Floop's "Thumb-Thumb" robots whose arms, legs, and head are made of thumbs, and taken to Floop's castle. Felix is alerted to the parents' capture, activates the fail-safe, tells the children the truth, and that he is not their uncle. The house is assaulted by Thumb-Thumbs, and the children escape alone on a submarine that's set to auto-pilot to a safe house. At the safe house, Carmen unlocks the door using her full name, and the children learn of their parents' past as they decide to rescue them.
Inside of Floop's castle, he introduces his latest creation to Mr. Lisp, small robots in the shape of children. He wishes to replace the world leaders' children with these super-strong robots to control the world. The androids are "dumb", and cannot function outside of their inherent programming. Lisp is furious, demanding usable androids to sell to his clients. Floop along with his second-in-command Alexander Minion interrogate Gregorio and Ingrid. Floop demands the 'Third Brain', but Ingrid has no idea what he's talking about. Gregorio claims that he destroyed the brain years ago. Thinking the brain must be with the children, Floop sends his minions after them. Gregorio reveals to Ingrid the truth about the Third Brain. It was the codename of a project back when he worked in the science division of OSS. It was to house the skills of all of the world's best super spies. The project was deemed too dangerous, was scrapped and the materials to be destroyed, but Gregorio couldn't destroy the brain.
Back at the safe house, the kids are visited by Ms. Gradenko. Gradenko says she works for OSS, and is there to help the children. Gradenko wants the Third Brain, but Carmen does not know anything. Gradenko orders the house to be dismantled, and Juni sees Thumb-Thumbs outside destroying the submarine. Gradenko's intentions revealed, Juni accidentally exposes the Third Brain, and a chase ensues with Carmen and some henchmen with jet packs. Carmen eventually gets the brain, and she and Juni escape the Thumbs.
Carmen realizes too late that the bracelet Gradenko gave her was a tracking device, and she and Juni are attacked by their robot counterparts. Although he tries, Juni cannot destroy the Brain, and the androids got it as they fly away. With the Third Brain, Floop can achieve his goal, but he wishes to continue his children's show. Minion has different plans, and takes over, locking Floop into his "virtual room." The kids receive reluctant help from Gregorio's brother Isador "Machete" Cortez when they come to his spy shop, steal some of his gear, and take his spy plane to fly to Floop's castle. Juni crashes the plane into the water, and the two swim into the castle. Minion takes Ingrid and Gregorio to the "Fooglilizer." Gregorio reveals that Minion used to work for the OSS, however Minion was thrown out thanks to Gregorio turning him in, when discovering Minion's intent to input his own ideas concerning the Third Brain.
Juni rescues Floop, and the three of them head to the control room. Floop theorizes he can reprogram the androids. They trap Minion on the Fooglilizer and, confronting Lisp and Gradenko, the family are beset by 500 robots. Machete busts through the window, and joins the family to fight. Floop resets the androids. With the children on their side, the family heads home.
With advice from Juni, Floop introduces the android children on his show. The family's breakfast is interrupted by Devlin who has a mission for Carmen and Juni; Carmen accepts on one condition, that they work as a family.

Review: The Floop creations are too silly to appeal to adults but will probably provide some laughs for kids but generally the film gets the tone right for both groups.Rodriguez directs with his usual approach and I quite enjoyed the effect it had here because it does suit the silly, hyper material (which he also wrote).
The effects are mainly good and it should work for most kids in the way that older boys like their gadgets and fantasy video games.
I didn't like Cumming at all but that was more to do with his character; Shalhoub was OK, Hatcher was fun, Cheech pops up briefly, Patrick has a small role, Trejo is ever reliable and George Clooney puts in a small but amusing appearance.Overall this is not a great film because it all nonsense but then, as a kids' film, it doesn't matter so much.
Yet, as this energetic, light-hearted Bondesque spoof proves, Rodriguez has the talent to turn his hand to just about anything, and inject it with the suspense and adrenalin that are his trademark.From the gloriously OTT opening scene (which tells the story of how two agents sent to kill each other fall in love and settle down) to the last second, 'Spy Kids' doesn't miss a trick.
This was a silly kids' adventure story but still fun the younger ones and for adults, thanks to colorful scenes, great special effects, decent humor and a nice family tone to it.
This also looks very good on DVD.Included in the color and characters are "the thumb people" who were especially fun to watch.The only problem I found with it is the last 30 minutes in which it got too silly and emphasized (typical Hollywood) how the kids can do the job better than the adults, which a ludicrous film cliché.
They were too athletic to be real children, but I'd like to think that they are showing the kids seeing the movie that they can do anything that they put their mind to.
Fun for kids and their parents, good for a family movie.
SPY KIDS / (2001) *** (out of four)By Blake French:	If James Bond married another secret agent, had kids, privately continued his life as a spy, became captured, and left his rescuing to his offspring, we would have the formula for Robert Rodriguez's new action adventure, "Spy Kids." Rodriguez normally directs harsher, more brutal movies, like "Desperado" and "The Faculty," but accustoms a slick style of adventure and humor in this film that exceeds past the level of any of his recent work.
She prepares her offspring for bed and turns the lights off, walks to her husband, and explains she thinks it would be a good idea to tell Carmen and Juni their real identities as top-secret spies; the story Ingrid enlightened her kids with was true.
Rodriguez quickly sketched his characters, but his method is surprisingly effective; the movie starts out with fast-paced action and captures our attention abruptly and does not really lose energy throughout its running time.
We learn the two married spies have retired from the business nine years prior, but their fellow OSS agents are disappearing all over the world, and thinks it to be the work of a kids TV show host named Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming in a very whimsical, fitting performance) and his assistant, Minion (Tony Shalhoub).
Finally, a live-action family movie that entertained me and my wife immensely, while my six-year old daughter had a blast too!The most obvious (and fitting) comparison film is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Amazing fantasy world, some true menace, and a great message about being true to yourself and your family.Spy Kids as a family movie for the post-Matrix age.
This odd blend of one of the best (The Matrix) and worst (Baby Geniuses) movies of 1999 is surprisingly exciting for something so "PG", and director and writer Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn) manages to create loads of fun while still keeping the violence level down.He manages to do all this by being incredibly inventive with his special effects.
Back home, the feuding siblings must learn to work together in order to save their parents and the world as they are tossed into the spy game as well.It seems as if the best kids movies always have a family-like theme to them, and "Spy Kids" is no exception.
Alan Cumming is also very good, turning in an absent minded Willy Wonka style performance that also fits in very well with Rodriguez's style for this movie, which seems to be based largely around an amusement park surrounding a James Bond movie.His film may be corny for older kids, but this is for the young ones and chances are you will never find a movie as decent and fun for them as this one is for a long time.
Spy Kids is a special kind of family film that will please adults and children alike.
The parents buy the movie or the ticket for the kids, so they should both be provided with entertainment.Director Robert Rodriguez is all about special effects.
So it's nice to see Spy Kids was made just in the nic of time when technology could produce such a fun, original picture.The story is about two youngsters, Carmen (Vega) and Juni (Sabara), whose parents (Banderas and Gugino) are undercover spies.
They don't know their parents are spies, but after staying with their "Uncle" Felix (Marin), he tells them about their parents during an emergency, and sends both of them off to rescue their parents from an evil TV show host named Fegan Floop (Cumming).Spy Kids is only limited by the imagination from Robert Rodriguez head.
I was actually hoping two would go to war with each other if you know what I mean.The two leads are fairly decent actors, not perfect, but they have some time to practice, and I think these films are good places to start.
The storyline was the least of my concerns, I just wanted good-humored, little to non-violent fun, and Spy Kids works.
I loved this film as a kid and wanted to go back and watch it again to spot all the moments I enjoyed first time around.I think all these years later the film still holds up as a bitter than average family film.
I don't think the director needed to stretch it out to be a trilogy (or add the very poor fourth entry many years later)but that's another matter.The two lead kids play the parts well and have a good dynamic between them and Antonio Banderas/Carla Gugino are good support as the parents.Watching it back now though I think it does have some slow parts and the technology looks a bit dated compared to what we're used to today, but Spy Kids 1 still remains a quality film for all the family..
Director Robert Rodriguez (who has previously done just violent R-rated movies) turns out a picture that will appeal to adults and children equally.
Spy Kids is a film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez.
And I can safely say that I didn't like it.Plot: Carmen and Juni decide to take matters on their own hands when their parents who happen to be ex spies get kidnapped.Story and direction: This film had quite a good story in its place.
Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids has a very special significance for me: it's the first movie I ever saw in theatres, and therefore left quite an impression on me.
Rodriguez makes two types of films: shamelessly violent, over the top, bloody genre fun, and family orientated sci fi/fantasy for kids.
Newcomers Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara play youngsters Carmen and Juni Cortez, who are surprised to learn that their unassuming parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are in fact lethal undercover spies, and need their help after being kidnapped by eccentric megalomaniac Floop (Alan Cumming hamming it up terrifically).
It's full of fun special effects and offers little crudeness like this year's previous Shrek in the way of family entertainment value.
I thought Spy Kids was a pretty cool movie to watch.
Forget about discovering that your parents were a pair of weirdo wizards (yawn!): in Spy Kids, Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega) and her younger brother Juni (Daryl Sabara) find out that their mum and dad are ex-secret agents, which is a whole lot cooler in my book (I guess being raised on James Bond films might have affected my opinion somewhat).
This means that when Mr and Mrs Cortez (suave Antonio Banderas and yummy Carla Gugino) are captured by criminals intent on taking over the world with an army of robot children, it's up to the kids to save the day, equipped with all sorts of ultra-cool, high-tech gadgetry supplied by their uncle Machete (Danny Trejo).Pure, unadulterated slam-bang craziness from the warped mind of Robert Rodriguez, Spy Kids is cool, action packed fun for the whole family —perfect entertainment for a rainy Sunday afternoon on the sofa with the children.
Lots of quick camera switches and fast action mark this as clearly a Rodriguez film.The movie itself focuses on one family and works well by exploiting the differences between the parents and the children.
Robert Rodriguez has a great way of looking at life and the kids in this movie were just as good as the kids he had in Four Rooms.
'In search of castaways'), crossed with the old-fashioned, fetishised gadgetry and outre sets of Supermarionation; spliced, of course, with the more late-20th century likes of 'Star Wars', 'The Matrix', 'Mission Impossible 2' etc., and, hearteningly, the queasy colour schemes and various plot points from 'The City of Lost Children', which might be this film's dark double.As in 'The Matrix', there are some pop-metaphysical pretensions, such as the scene where our heroes fight their evil doppelgangers, but this is part of the conservative message: the rupture of the family unit entails a breakdown in identity (see also the transformation of dad into a grotesque puppet thing).In any event, we are free to ignore the message, and enjoy the film's surface (certainly, Rodriguez could argue that his message is explicitely framed as a fantasy, a bedtime story, unrealisable in the real world; that would make the tone sarcastic and in bad faith).
I took four kids aged from 7 to 11 and none of them liked it.The script seemed to be based on a Willy Wonka style story but it just didn't have anything to it.If you are considering seeing this movie dont waste your time, it is bad.They are making a sequel, so it may be worth watching to see if they can even make a worse movie, but I don't think it is possible..
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.
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.
Spy kids is a great movie which can be enjoyed by the whole family.
The film is the first in a long line to use the idea of child spies as the plot device with the story itself centring on twelve-year-old Carmen and her eight-year-old brother Juni as they strive to rescue their spy parents from the grasps of Floop, a campy TV presenter with dreams of world domination.There are, of course, an abundance of special effects in the film that are of a decent quality and a number of intriguing James Bond-like gadgets make their appearance.
Also, the child actors, Alexa Vega as Carmen and Daryl Sabara, show they are talented enough to carry off the bulk of the film themselves with limited support from Antonio Benderas and Carla Gugino, who play their screen parents.Unlike the lukewarm sequels, 'Spy Kids' is the kind of children's flick that older family members won't mind watching since the funny and action-packed plot and appealing performances by all the actors involved provide fun for a wide age range.
A kids movie that proves adults (or parents) could watch this film also..
My parents used to tell me that once I reached a certain age, no longer was I suppose to watch cartoon flicks or kid movies but films that a ten year old boy were suppose to watch: action films filled with blood, carnage, neat monsters and so forth.When I first heard that Spy Kids was out back in 2001, I was already used to the technology of DVD's replacing VHS movies while at the same time hearing how this movie directed by Robert Rodriguez captivated both children and adults alike.
Even my high school teacher Mr. MacAulay told me that he liked the film more than his daughter Fiona in which he was delighted with the special effects and cool story line.To my review of the film, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) think they have it pretty bad with their lame parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) who aren't hip like their peers parents.
What they don't realize is that both mom and dad are international spies who forbidden themselves from making any more espionage attempts until getting a briefing that a couple of their field agents have been kidnapped where it's up to them to save them.However, once the parents are kidnapped, it's up to Carmen and Juni to take their parents positions and save them."Spy Kids" is a whole lot of fun with a big set of innovated techniques from Robert Rodriguez where I didn't feel bored from the first minute of the film..
A fun story, extremely interesting and entertaining characters and an uplifting message all add up to a successful film in Spy Kids.The family is the fundamental unit of society and such is made particularly evident in this film.
SPY KIDS / Starring by Antonio Banderas, Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega, Alan Cumming and Carla Gugini / Directed by Robert Rodriguez / Written by Robert Rodriguez / Rated PG / *** 1/2
Finally!The plot finds Antonio Banderas (Desperado) and Carla Gugino (The One) star as Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez, retired secret agents, though unknown to their two kids, Juni (Daryl Sabara) and Carmen (Alexa Vega).
But could there possibly be someone else stirring in the plot?Sure, the story isn't overly complicated and everything has a goofy look to it, but I didn't watch a movie called Spy Kids to come and expect Citizen Kane.
It's defenitely the best of the Spy Kids movies though, and does have some good moments..
spy kids is, as far as i can tell, a tribute to that film, not just in style, but in it's plot, which is about a little boy who has to rescue his mother from the diabolical dr t, who has kidnapped 500 children to play his giant piano.
For example, if you read my comments on "crime" or gangster movies, I'll usually start off by telling the reader whether the filmmakers succeeded in making it past that particular hurdle: Convincing me to to see criminals as human beings whose fate I should care about.Spy Kids is billed as a film for "the whole family", which is code language for saying that your 2-year old should be able to stay put through the whole thing (assuming a diaper change just before the opening credits).
I think this movie used WAY too much computer effects than it should have.I guess if you've got young kids, go ahead and watch this film, the kids may enjoy it.
I thought I wouldn't like Spy Kids, but it's a terrific & funny movie.
Probably my favorite movie since Can't Hardly Wait and Clueless (and let's include Being John Malkovich, too)  But anyway I would just like to say that Spy Kids is a fruition of many years of hard work for Robert Rodriguez, the director.
I am 14 years old and I saw "Spy Kids" with my 7 year old sister and my mom and we all loved it which proves that this movie really is for the whole family.At first, I didn't want to see it.