Spy Kids

Released 2001
Stars Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Alan Cumming, Daryl Sabara, Teri Hatcher, Cheech Marin, Robert Patrick, Tony Shalhoub, Danny Trejo
Directed by Robert Rodriguez

"Spy Kids" is giddy with the joy of its invention. The movie begins with Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino as Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez, spies who were once enemies but then fall in love and get married and have two great kids, Carmen and Juni. They retire from the spy business, but then an evil minion named Minion kidnaps the parents, and it's up to the spy kids to rescue them and save the world from the threat of robo-kids and Thumb Monsters. Minion works for the diabolical Fegan Floop, whose job as a kiddie-show host masks his scheme to rule the world.

You can imagine Robert Rodriguez, the writer and director, grinning as he dreamed this stuff up. It should also be observed that he avoids disturbing violence, that the entire movie is in a cheerful kidding spirit, and that the stunts and skills exhibited by the kids look fun, not scary. The props, even the boat-plane-sub, look like extensions of their toys, not like adult inventions that have been scaled down. Families are often reduced to attending scatological dumber-and-dumbest movies like "See Spot Run"--movies that teach vulgarity as a value. "Spy Kids" is an intelligent, upbeat, happy movie that is not about the comedy of embarrassment, that does not have anybody rolling around in dog poop, that would rather find out what it can accomplish than what it can get away with.

Summary by Roger Ebert