Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Random Trivia:
What preview would you expect to see before Spy Kids in 4D? If you answered The Iron Lady, the biopic of Margaret Thatcher starring Meryl Streep, then you’d be much more psychic than I am. Now I understand why my stepson has been begging to see this movie. He was hoping to see a teaser for The Iron Lady and knew it would be coming before another Oscar-baiting prestige picture, Spy Kids in 4D with its pioneering use of aroma-scope technology! And he’s also really been wanting to see a comedy about a harried working mom starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Whoever selected the previews for this feature obviously spent too much time sniffing the aroma-scope card!
Quick Impressions:
My eight-year-old stepson has been asking to see this movie. My two-year-old daughter has been begging to see any movie. And—embarrassing confession—I’ve been secretly curious about the whole aroma-scope thing. (I seem have a vague memory of this gimmick of a scratch-and-sniff card being trotted out before when I was younger, but maybe that was just a joke and never actually happened. I can’t be sure.)
I have to say, the use of aroma-scope was really disappointing (and that’s coming from someone with the lowest of expectations.) For one thing, the card didn’t really work right for me. Based on the context of the movie, the first smell was supposed to be bacon. I could only smell cough drops with a hint of Vicks Vapor Rub. Smell number 2 was a fruity medicinal aroma, like old gummy bears that had been slathered with Vicks Vapor Rub. Every other smell on the card replicated this blend. So if Vicks ever starts making medicated gummy bears, I already know what they will smell like if you scratch them. (Also—and this really was kind of annoying—once I scratched the card, my popcorn tasted far too much like cough drops for the rest of the movie.)
Another small complaint—at the beginning of the movie the voice of Ricky Gervais comes out of outer space (make of that what you will) to give us all card scratching instructions. When the number flashes on the screen, scratch the corresponding numeral on your card. This created a major problem for my two-year-old, who kept noisily pointing out, “It’s very dark in here, Mommy. I can’t see the numbers very well.” (Of course, that hardly mattered since every number smelled the same, but try to explain that to a frustrated two-year-old during a noisy movie!)
Now, I’m a reasonable person, and I understand that inexpensively implementing aroma-scope is bound to be a tricky business fraught with technical difficulties. But technical difficulties weren’t the only problem. As I watched the movie, I saw countless wasted opportunities for scratching and sniffing. (I mean, vomit bombs! Come on!) And then, smells 4, 5, and 6 came all at the same time when the kids ate a bunch of sugary snack food. What a waste! (I mean, there were only eight numbers on the card! The way the aroma-scope was implemented was beyond gimmicky. It was just insulting.)
We also took a risk and saw the movie in 3D. This, at least, gave my daughter something to talk about when she left the theater (and before). (“These glasses are hurting my ears. I’m going to take them off a little bit! Do they hurt your ears, too? Didn’t those glasses hurt your ears?”) The 3D was pretty bad. At several points, I removed my glasses to see what the movie looked like to my non-compliant daughter. For the most part, it looked exactly the same, just a tiny bit blurred. The 3D effects were not that impressive, not that anyone in their right mind would have expected them to be.
As we left the theater, my stepson declared, “That was awesome!” Then he didn’t say a word about it for the rest of the weekend. So it must not have been that awesome.
The Negatives:
As the movie started, I was thinking to myself how weird it is that Robert Rodriguez alternates between hard R stuff like Machete and Planet Terror and children’s movies like Spy Kids and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. I understand that he loves his kids, and I think that’s great, but it still makes for an unusual body of work.
Then, meditating on Sin City and Planet Terror, I watched the opening sequence of the movie in which a very pregnant Jessica Alba chases spies and engages in a very physical, acrobatic battle as she’s going into labor and trying to shrug off the contractions. I suddenly realized, You know, this is not that different.
For some reason, this opening sequence irritated me. If I’d seen it as a child, I might have thought it was kind of cool. I mean, what kid doesn’t want to discover that one of their relatives is secretly a spy (in the way children envision spies)? But now, as a mother who knows so many women who have had difficult pregnancies, I found it difficult to sympathize with a character who willingly endangered herself and her child by having a spy battle while in the early stages of labor.
I actually think Rodriguez is trying to show that mothers are really cool. (You pretty much have to be a superhero to live up to society’s expectations for women when it comes to balancing family and career.) But I found the scene off-putting, and I couldn’t help feeling that way. So many women have so much difficulty becoming pregnant, sustaining a pregnancy, and making it through labor without drastic complications. I just couldn’t like the opening scene for that reason.
Tearing this movie apart is easy, of course. It’s not a very good movie. I remember seeing the first Spy Kids in the theater when it came out. (For some reason, I wanted to go even though I was in college and didn’t have kids.) That movie was far from perfect but had a charm (and a coherence) that was definitely lacking in this installment. (I won’t say the charm was missing altogether, and I do appreciate Rodriguez’s pro-family morals.) But the movie just wasn’t very good. I’ve heard people defend these movies because they’re so low budget. How many millions of dollars does it take to write a decent script again?
That’s really the biggest negative. The movie isn’t well written. The whole effort seems lazy. And the time-traveling angle is underdeveloped and poorly presented.
I remember when I saw the first Spy Kids. When Carmen said, “Oh shiitake mushrooms,” everyone in the theater kind of groaned. When she said it again this time, it was pretty much the highlight of the movie. That’s not good. Basically, the two new spy kids had too little agency in the film. They didn’t get to do much until the very end, and even that was kind of anticlimactic.
I see no reason to go point-by-point in my critique of the film. I’m not going to spend more time on the script than Robert Rodriguez did.
The Redeeming Qualities:
I was awfully glad to see Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara back as Carmen and Juni Cortez. I actually liked the parts of the movie starring them. The new kids are not bad, either. They just weren’t given anything in particular to do. And it was nice to see Danny Trejo still hanging around as Uncle Machete. Ricky Gervais wasn’t given much to work with as Argonaut, but then maybe less is more when it comes to his comedy in a family film. Oh yes, and the baby was really, really cute. (That’s the one thing my stepson did mention again after we got home—probably not the most glowing endorsement for an action film directed at boys his age.)
The film’s family positive message was good as always. As a step-mom, I appreciated the “blended family is still a real family” concept. The idea of the importance of family is great. The thing is, cinematic morals aren’t supposed to be free-floating entities. They really work better if they have some semblance of an entertaining story attached to them.
I liked that they included a leading character with a disability but didn’t make a big deal about it. (I do think, however, that Cecil’s hearing aids or greatly heightened other senses should probably have played more of a role in the movie’s resolution.)
Spy Kids 4 is far from being the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Stuff happens a lot, and it’s all over pretty quickly. So that’s good, right?
Best Action Sequence:
I liked the sequence where the children are flying away in the escape pods, but looking back, I can’t remember why. I think it’s because I was excited to use the smell card again as they passed (and regurgitated) so many pungent things. But we never scratched the card once during this part, more’s the pity.
Best Joke:
The only part in the movie that’s actually funny at all is when the dad, played by Joel McHale, goes nuts and starts eating the incriminating footage he’s taken of his wife. (It’s completely over the top, of course, but if you don’t let that bother you, the scene is laugh-out-loud funny.) (The thing is, it’s hard as an adult to ignore what the other guy is saying. That woman should be investigated for needlessly endangering her baby. But it’s kid’s movie. It’s a kid’s movie. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.)
Best Scene:
The final action scene is the only time the kids really get to do anything useful, so I guess that’s the best one.
Best Surprise:
I was most surprised to see Carmen and Juni back again because I didn’t know they were in the movie. The other surprise has to do with the villain, but it’s not a surprise at all if you’ve ever seen any promotional material related to the movie and know the names of the actors.
Best Scene Visually:
I thought the 3D effects were very cheesy on the whole. (In fact, one of them involves a bowl of cheese puffs falling all over the audience.) (And we didn’t smell the cheese puffs, if you’re curious.) (But if we had, they would have smelled like cough drops.)
The Performances:
Nobody gives a bad performance exactly. Jeremy Piven is actually pretty good, in fact. And I did like the new kids, Mason Cook and Rowan Blanchard, as Cecil and Rebecca. I wish they’d had more to do. Everything just kept happening to them. That’s too much like real life for kids!
I really thought that Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara were the most interesting characters in the movie (possibly because they’ve already been developed in previous films and nobody was developed very well in this movie). Jessica Alba and Rowan Blanchard did a good job with the stepmother/stepdaughter difficulty, but the movie failed to make that dynamic part of a plot involving action that was actually interesting to watch.
Belle and Genny Solorzano gave the only memorable performance of the movie. They’re adorable as the baby!
Overall:
I’m so glad I saw this movie. Previously, I thought Cars 2 was the worst children’s movie of the summer, and that is so unfair to the well-meaning if misguided people who made it.
Spy Kids just didn’t feel fresh or interesting this time around. For a movie so obsessed with giant clock gears, its elements didn’t really click, failed to work. The movie is about the horror of time speeding up. Watching it, you think, Gosh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if time did speed up right now? Unfortunately, time seems to slow to a crawl while you’re watching Spy Kids 4.
This was probably the worst movie I’ve seen all summer. That said, will I watch a sequel?
Yes.
I still like Carmen and Juni, and I grudgingly must admit that I also like Robert Rodriguez. How depressing! I’m probably the reason stupid movies like this keep getting made. Spy Kids 4’s biggest fault is that it didn’t stink enough! Isn’t that sad?