Spy Kids film review

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SPY KIDS

Gregorio (Banderas) and Ingrid Cortez (Gugino) are two of the world's greatest secret agents, who gave up their undercover lives to raise a family.

Nine years after their retirement, they are called back into action to thwart the plans of evil techno-wizard Fegan Floop (Cumming) and his vile sidekick Minion (Shalhoub).

Despite their best efforts, the Cortezes are captured by their arch-nemesis and sentenced to slow deaths as hideously disfigured characters on Floop's TV show. The only people who can rescue the husband and wife team are their kids, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara). Aided by their kindly Uncle Felix (Cheech Marin) and armed with hi-tech gadgets, the plucky youngsters embark on a thrilling mission to stop Floop and save their parents.

Writer-director Robert Rodriguez's frenetic action-adventure is a kid's dream writ large. He has his pint-sized heroes performing all sorts of gravity-defying acrobatics, aided by an wondrous technology and space-age transport.

Rodriguez rarely takes his foot off the accelerator, charging from one adrenaline-pumping set-piece to the next. Yet a little more downtime would have been nice to build the characters, especially the relationship between the parents and children.

The film borrows liberally from a variety of sources, most notably the Bond movies and The Matrix. Amid all the action and explosions, there is plenty of time for laughter, like when Carmen and Juni are left battered and bruised by their first encounter with their android doppelgangers.

Vega and Sabara are delightful as the eponymous spy kids, while Banderas and Gugino ooze Latin passion as their concerned parents. Cumming is a treat too, camping it up to the hilt as the evil genius who just wants to be loved (and to have a top-rated children's TV programme).

Spy Kids is 87 minutes of unadulterated fun.