Spy Kids (2001) Review

 Spy Kids (2001) 7.5/10

Hello everyone and welcome to a piece of my childhood. Spy Kids was released on March 18, 2001, with the director being Robert Rodriguez. The movie was a massive success, with both critics and general audiences loving the movie.

I loved the Spy Kids movies growing up. Reminded me of Kids Next Door meets James Bond. I loved the whole secret agent society with kids and they got all of these cool gadgets, and of course a ridiculous plot lmao. Watching this now as an adult, it surprisingly still holds up. It’s an entertaining mess with a great lesson at the end. Let’s begin.

The story follows kids Carmen and Juni as they rescue their parents, who are ex-spies, who got kidnapped by Mr Floop. Their parents, Gregorio and Ingrid, accepted a mission from the spy agency O.S.S. to find and recover four missing agents. Floop runs a TV show called Floop's Fooglies that's made and geared towards children. In the show, Floop has these creatures called Fooglies, which are the morphed missing spy agents that talk in reverse. They are kept on Floop's island fortress and forced to do the show. Along the way, Carmen and Juni learn their parents' secrets and try to fix family issues between each other and other family members.

Honestly the story for this isn't bad at all. I actually enjoyed my time here with the movie. The film is geared towards children, but is good for the whole family. The lesson this movie portrays is the value of being and sticking with family and it's actually an important lesson that I don't see done often nowadays. I liked Carmen, Juni, Machete (yes, the Machete), and Floop's character development. Honestly, I gotta say Carmen and Floop were my favorite characters here. I liked the twist that Floop's sidekick (named Minion) was the main villain and that Floop was just going along with his ideas because of his show.

I love the world for this movie. I've always been fascinated by spy movies (even though I barely watch them) and the gadgets they have are very weird (like electro shock bubble gum). But hey, the wackier, the better.

This movie is out there. The casting is quite decent tbh. I was not expecting the fake uncle to be Cheech Marin (from Cheech and Chong), Danny Trejo's Machete to be here at all, Tony Shalhoub (most notable for his role as Adrian Monk from the show Monk) to play the main villain, and that Mike Judge (creator of King of the Hill) to play one of the missing agents. Hell, even George Clooney popped in at the end playing as the president. You can tell all of the actors had a lot of fun doing this movie, which is always great to see.

Cinematography is average at best. Nothing abstract or any shot that caught my attention. I do like the visual and virtual effects. Everything looks so dated (from the CGI used, the camera shots, and the way the overall movie looks). The movie is a product of its time and that's not necessarily a bad thing. When I first saw this movie in theaters, I was 3 years old, so I had a bit of nostalgia watching this.

Just a thing I noticed when I recall the movie right now: none of the kids had phones. Compared to films nowadays, everyone has a phone in their pocket. Thinking about it now, it was actually refreshing to see little to no phones in the movie. Yeah sure there were video calls and such, but I don't recall any cellular phones being used.

The set pieces and set designs were so wacky and wonky, I really loved it. I loved the architecture for Floop's fortress and just how fucking weird it is. All the wacky curves and weird shapes really characterized the place and how it identified with Floop's crazy personality and mind. Despite their atrocious designs, I somewhat enjoyed the Fooglies. They fit perfectly into Floop's crazy world.

The comedy for this is good too. There's a poop joke, sibling squabbles, and other basic early 2000's children's movie humor. There were a couple of jokes that had me dying though. There's one about Cain and Abel and another about emotional Latinos and I was not expecting these. Completely caught me off guard. Just wanted to point out that just because a movie is geared towards children doesn't mean that the rest of the family has to be left out and this movie understands that. The movie tries to connect people of all ages and I love this.

Overall, I had fun with this movie. The writing is pretty good and the outrageous VFX added so much to this movie, even though the movie is heavily outdated now. There were moments where I was like "Wtf! Holy Shit! No Way!" and all the good stuff. This is a perfect family friendly movie and I highly recommend it to those who want something to watch for family movie night.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.