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Also this issue: Blax Power Clod, James Clod |
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August 8-14, 2002
movies
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 SECONDS OF TREASURE: Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara) look for something or other. |
SPY KIDS 2: THE ISLAND OF LOST DREAMSWritten and directed by Robert Rodriguez
A Miramax release
Now playing at area theaters
Lucky Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara). Not only does he have amazing parents, international super-spies Gregorio (Antonio Banderas) and Ingrid (Carla Gugino); a totally fun gig as SK2, an operative for the newly formed SpyKIDS division; and a fantastic little insecty-looking robot named R.A.L.P.H. He also has a decent older sister, Carmen (Alexa Vega), a.k.a. SK1. When you’re 9 years old, this last is an especially big deal.
Juni and Carmen’s adventures form the center of Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams. And their perspective, part convincingly ingenuous and part movie-kid wise, organizes the film’s general view of things: Adults tend to err and children tend to save the world.
As in their first excursion, Juni and Carmen sort of stumble into a case, here involving a gizmo called a Transmooker: It shuts down anything that works by electricity, which is to say, just about everything the spies like to use, from their vehicles to their communicators to their extra-gadgety nanotechnology watches (many of these come courtesy of Uncle Machete, played again by that avuncular charmer, Danny Trejo). Also as in Spy Kids, Carmen and Juni get a little help from their properly prou
and concerned folks, who are in turn helped by Ingrid’s similarly supportive parents (Ricardo Montalban and Holland Taylor).
At film’s start, the Cortez children find themselves bested by their nearest rivals, Gary and Gerti Giggles (Matthew O’Leary and Emily Osment, Haley Joel’s little sister). Then all four are sent to rescue the U.S. president’s daughter Alexandra (Taylor Momsen), who’s stranded on a ride at an amusement park. Juni saves the girl, but Gary retrieves the Transmooker, which turns out to be more valuable to the government than Alexandra.
This attitude is typical of the film’s non-Cortez adults. As it happens, their new boss, Donnagan (Mike Judge), is also Gary and Gerti’s dad. And so, he’s inclined to blame Juni rather than Gary when the Transmooker is, inevitably, stolen by a crew of villainous magnet-heads. Removed from service, Juni is despondent, until his sister hacks into the computer system, reinstates him, and gets them assigned to the most prestigious new mission on a secret island.
There they befriend “mad” genetic scientist Romero (Steve Buscemi), who’s afraid of his own creations, now “run amok.” These are different animals spliced together, like a spider monkey, catfish, horsefly and something called a slizzard (part lizard, part snake). Looking less like state-of-the-art digital effects than like they’ve descended from Ray Harryhausen heaven, the beasts are corny and fun, not very scary. Juni has more trouble dealing with Carmen’s crush on smarmy Gary than with any of the island’s ostensible “dangers.”
More cute diversion than thrillsville outing, Spy Kids 2, like its predecessor, cuts between the kids’ exploits and their parents making their way to the island, breaking down momentum and allowing the “family” theme full exposure (that said, Banderas is an endearing, self-goofing dad). The closing credits sequence offers a glimpse of something else -- Vega singing a little like Britney-meets-Avril Lavigne, with Sabara on guitar -- but for the most part, the film follows formula.
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