Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

conservativebiasnews Special effects, terrible, a 10 year old could make better. Story, Cliché in every way possible, Kids find out parents are spies, stuff happens, explosions to catch the 9 second attention span of a 6 year old, one-liner quips to catch the attention of the bored to death parents, evil dude, they stop him, mutated thumb creatures, and that's about it. When I saw this movie IT SCARED ME FOR LIFE, I was like 7 or 8 at the time but little did I know the horrors that were ahead. I was used to top notch special effects like in Star Wars, even though they were old but still worked well, or high quality CG affects, but THIS, was something else entirely, it was so cheap I was actually disturbed. The bizarre Lazy Town, Willy Wonka hybrid cartoon looked like an acid trip and the flying scenes were so cheap it makes Ratatoing look professional. The villain seemed really cliché and about the same as anyone out there, the "kid spy" thing really wears off because only 4.01% of the movie is actually spying, and the lighting made Man of Steel look like My Little Pony.The best part of the movie is the one reference of the Cold War. And the end of course.Also I hate the whole "lets let minors handle extremely dangerous, unrealistic missions because we want exploit a popular demographic" thing because it is REALLY annoying and an overused story telling device. Examples: The Hunger Games, Insurgent, Maze Runner, etc.

NateWatchesCoolMovies 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. It has loads of Rodriguez's trademark imagination and vision, as well as a stacked cast and a whimsical sense of adventure that makes it a super charged Saturday morning cartoon style bucket of fun. Rodriguez makes two types of films: shamelessly violent, over the top, bloody genre fun, and family orientated sci fi/fantasy for kids. He fares better in the former, as this is really the only good one in the secondary category. The sequels are trash, and I don't know what he was thinking with Sharkboy and Lava Girl, but with this one his filmmaking skill and passion for the craft work its charm and provide a wonderful experience. 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). Aided by their uncles Felix (Cheech Marin) and Machete (Danny Trejo) they embark on a dazzling adventure to find Floop's surreal, isolated palace, take down baddies Ms. Gredanko (Teri Hatcher) and Mr. Lisp (Robert Patrick) and save their parents. The four have amazing chemistry as a familial unit, especially when it comes time to kick major butt. The practical based effects have a wondrous vitality, from the Thumb Thumb henchman to the eye boggling, Terry Gilliam-esque realm that Floop resides in. There's also work from Tony Shaloub, Mike Judge, Richard Linklater and a sly cameo from George Clooney. No shortage of imagination, creativity and fun.

zakatak3613 Honestly, I don't know where to start. I first saw this movie when I was nine years old, and it insulted my intelligence then. Having just seen a few fragments recently while my younger siblings were watching it, I decided to do a comprehensive criticism of exactly WHY it was so terrible. And let me tell you, there are plenty of reasons. Here are my top three.Number One: StoryOkay, so the concept of "Parents were spies, kids find out, have to rescue parents before plot to take over the world is successful," isn't actually ALL terrible. It has some holes, and is admittedly pretty cheesy, but isn't so bad, if executed right. Unfortunately, this movie wasn't executed right, for several reasons. First off, where the Tartarus did the script writer get the gods-awful idea to make the villain a kids TV show star?!? Yes, a sadistic, Burton-esque, disturbing kids show which uses mutated spies as it's actors, (more on that later) but seriously? What the heck? I seriously want to know what Muse (or lack thereof) whispered in your ear to have produced this bizarre monstrosity. Why did you choose to make the generic, faceless henchmen into THUMB PEOPLE? Why is your army of indestructible automatons disguised to look like children? Why did you have to make his base a fun house that seemed to have been designed by MC Escher in the middle of the ocean? Why are your supercomputers designed to look like little deformed cyborg brains? (perhaps to resemble the minds of the producers of this movie?) WHY?!? *Ahem, sorry.* Second reason: this movie brought the art of the cliché to an all-new level. Seriously, when my friend and I were watching this, we literally predicted EVERY plot twist. Keep in mind that we were nine-year-olds."Oh look, there's a bad guy who serves the Demon Tellytubbies show guy! I'll bet he's the REAL bad guy, and has some connection with their parent's past!" or "Oh, look, they introduced Uncle Machete, but he doesn't want to help. I wonder how long we'll last until he shows up to save the day?" And so on and so forth. In all, they could have done WAY better with the storyline, which was pretty much just crap.Number Two: Special FX Really guys, did you even try to make these effects look real? I'm all for CG animation, but honestly, you could have gotten better animation results from my 11th grade Graphic's Design class, and we were only using Photoshop! For example, during the scene when Mom and Dad Cortez drove their submarine car off a cliff, there was a glaringly visible change from real car to CG-ed car. All of the other fanciful technology (Escape Sub, Jetpacks, Thumb-Thumbs, Movie Room in Fruit-Loop Guy's castle, etc) was obviously green-screened. The lighting and shading was all off, the coloration was garish, gaudy, and generally crappy, and overall, the animation looked like a bunch of circus clowns came in and covered everything in overly polished balloon latex. It looked that fake. And don't get me started on the crummy rubber suits they did for the mutated spies. Really peoples? To quote the internet term, "DERP." Number Three: Psychological Damage I swear, as a nine-year old, this movie didn't die in my mind easily. Even now, many many years later, it still disturbs me. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I saw Lord of the Rings around the same time, and the grisly orcs didn't even make me bat an eye. Yet the Burton-esque feel to the main villain was just too much for me, and the floating eyeballs, mutated dudes with their overly happy squeaking and tittering, and tinkly music-box music didn't help. Seriously, overly cheerful and bizarre kids shows are the stuff of nightmare. It seems like they went all out to make this particular aspect as weird and disturbing as possible, and I really can't understand why. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't SCARY or intense or thrilling like a spy movie should be, it was just WEIRD. Sort of the creepy weirdness that's usually associated with clowns or carousel music. It just felt out of place and frankly, I'm surprised no-one else has sued this company for psychologically scarring their kids. I don't know how to describe it, I just was seriously weirded out by this factor.In all, this movie is scraping the barrel when it comes to entertainment, which is why I'm depressed that some relatively prominent actors like Antonio Banderas lowered their dignity and restating by participating in this blot on the name of film. Maybe they signed on before they realized what they were getting into, I don't know. The acting was the only commendable part of this film, which frankly wasn't much to work with. Kudos to you, the actors for a good effort, but not good enough to salvage this shipwreck. My only thought is that the gods must hate humanity to allow this monstrosity to exist. Which gods, you ask? ALL THE GODS! May mercy be had upon the souls of those who spawned forth this crime against art.

MovieGuy109 I came into Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids expecting stupidity and cliché, but I got something enjoyable and original. It's full of fun special effects and offers little crudeness like this year's previous Shrek in the way of family entertainment value. This is a likable adventure from start to finish and never tries to make itself larger than it appears to be. It's not pretending to be a cultural statement or a book of moral values. It advertises itself as slick entertainment and as a whole, it pulls it off and never really lets us down. A nice change of pace for Rodriguez, after directing a number of violent movies comes up with this most pleasing children's yarn.