Spy Kids
On the one hand, Robert Rodriguez wrote and directed Desperado, which I thought was stylish and nicely done. On the other hand, he directed From Dusk Till Dawn, which I thought started out like an interesting Tarantino movie and then dissolved into mindless vampire carnage.
So I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Spy Kids, but Nick Lowe (superb film critic for Interzone, who may have supplanted Richard von Busack in the number-one spot on my personal hierarchy of film reviewers) reviewed it fairly favorably a while back, so I figured I'd give it a try. Besides, I tend to figure that any movie featuring Antonio Banderas can't be all bad. (Well, except for Two Much.)
It turned out to be mostly what I expected: fun fluff, enjoyable if you can turn off your brain and relax into the silliness. Which I mostly could. The cartoony bits got a little bit too cartoony for me, but in some ways that added to the silly charm, and kept me from taking the movie too seriously. I mean, we're talking about a movie in which the villain is a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Willy Wonka; he's a kids'-TV-show host whose theme song starts like this:
"It's a cruel, cruel world, all you little boys and girls,
And some mean, nasty people want to have you for their sup-per. . . ."
Some other interesting notes: the villain's assistant, a character by the name of Minion, is played by Tony Shalhoub, who I like a great deal; there are cameos by Cheech Marin and (right at the end) George Clooney; various characters have names that are references to Notorious; Mike Judge (creator of Beavis & Butt-head) and Robert Patrick (villain of Terminator 2) have fairly prominent parts. Some scenes are set in the fictional city of San Diablo, which I thought was a great city name.
And it's the only movie I can think of that features a Latino super-spy, not to mention his half-Latino kids.
Overall: surprisingly fun; several very nice moments; not brilliant by any means, but not bad either. I may even see the sequel, due out later this year.