Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003

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I suppose there's one good thing about Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: with the way the "kids" have grown over the past few years, it's unlikely that there will be a Spy Kids 4. THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**) Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) decided he no longer wanted to be a Spy Kid; he hung up his OCC ID and went into business for himself as a small-time gumshoe. But just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in...when OSS Agents Cesca (Salma Hayek) and Donnagon Giggles (Mike Judge), and President Devlin (George Clooney) tell Juni that OSS needs him to become an agent again. When Juni resists, they tell him the one thing that would make him go back: his sister, Agent Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega) is in danger. On assignment to stop the Evil Toymaker (Sylvester Stallone) from fulfilling his dastardly plan to get children around the world hooked on his new game, Game Over, so that they would no longer listen to their parents, Carmen virtually goes into that game, getting stuck on level four. It's up to Juni to go into the game and save Carmen and the world, with a little help - and, competition - from Grandfather Cortez (Ricardo Montalban), and gamesters Rez (Robert Vito), Arnold (Ryan Pinkston), Francis (Bobby Edner), and Demetra (Courtney Jines). THE UPSHOT Two disclaimers before I start: 1) I'm partially blind in one eye; this impacted greatly on the technical aspect of watching a 3-D movie. My eyes hurt, to the point where I had to take the glasses off multiple times in the long 85 minutes of this movie. And 2) I am fully, quite painfully, aware that the Spy Kids series in general, and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over specifically, are "children's movies". As such, the target audience will likely love it, if only because of the gee-whiz factor of the 3-D glasses (I'm 40, and I can't remember the last 3-D movie I've seen; it has to be quite exciting for the kidlets to have their shot at 3-D in this day and age). But get this: when I turned around during the many breaks I had to take, I noticed many of the kids looking around the room, bored; and two of the kids in the row with me, were snoring. I was deeply disappointed with Spy Kids 3-D. I remembered enjoying Spy Kids 2, and thought this time around would be no different. Boy, was I ever wrong. To check myself, I went back and re-read my review of Spy Kids 2; it hasn't been that long ago since that movie came out, so why did the 3-D version turn me off so? And therein lies the answer: the 3-D dealie really, really, pissed me off. And not just because it really, really, hurt my eyes. It irritated my Inner Child, too. The beauty of Spy Kids 2, for me, was in its unassuming wit and charm, in the way it reflected creator Robert Rodriguez's vision without that stereotypes, and that it celebrated real, honest-to-goodness family values [no, not the ones in those empty slogans touted by political pimps on the Left and the Right. The only way those nitwits would know Family Values is if it walked up and offered them a bribe]. Spy Kids 3-D, on the other hand, seemed less interested in its story and more interested in the techie stuff. And let me tell ya, it suffered on both ends. Disclaimers aside, the 3-D looked awful when paired with Rodriguez's digitized effects. Sure, the first time nuts and bolts looked like they were flying right in front of your eyes, was cute; but seeing the characters reach out and juuuuust miss grabbing the objects that they went on to manipulate, for want of Cool! 3-D! Action!, got real tiresome, real quick. But even more than that, the 3-D was an unnecessary distraction, a way to waste roughly 55 minutes of an 85 minute movie, so that older viewers wouldn't realize that, hey, there's no real story here! Only, many of us realized exactly that. Right about the time we realized that most of the characters that inhabited the words of Spy Kids 1 and 2, would have what amounted to little more than a cameo in this third outing. So much for "family values". There were small pockets of frivolity, sprinkled here and there (a classic bit provided by Ricardo "Corinthan Leather" Montalban had the adults in the audience chuckling), pockets which almost overcame the tragedy of casting Sylvester Stallone to play any role in which he had to utter more than three words at a time. I'll put it this way: when I watched a similarly-gimmicky movie called Memento, I left the theater wondering if the movie would work well the "right" way. I left Spy Kids 3-D not caring if I ever saw it again - with or without 3-D glasses. Though now I wonder if those glasses will improve on some of the other crappy movies I've had to sit through lately. BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE "Game over" is right. This flick sucked all the fun right out of the series. SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER:   back to top And that's the way I see it. Rose "Bams" Cooper 3BlackChicks Review™ Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003 EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com    ICQ: 7760005 http://www.3blackchicks.com/