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FROM THE ARCHIVE FILES

'Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams'

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Starring: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara
Director: Robert Rodriguez
MPAA rating: PG for action and brief rude humor
Running time: 97 minutes
Release date: 08/07/02

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By Chris Garcia
American-Statesman Film Critic

Originally Posted: August 7, 2002

Fuse together the best amusement park, the wildest video game, a taffy factory explosion, James Bond and a pinch of whatever Timothy Leary was peddling in the '60s, and you get the eye-bulging cosmos of the "Spy Kids" franchise.

Rocket-powered sneakers, satellite watches, a thinga-majig that picks your nose for you, loony villains, sea monsters and, yup, flying pigs course through creator Robert Rodriguez's unshackled imagination, splattering the screen like paint balls. The result is a weird, wowee mural owing equally to Willy Wonka, Salvador Dali and H.R. Pufnstuf.

Whipping out fresh ideas every few minutes, Rodriguez paces his movies after the sugar rush of a 6-year-old boy. He just wants to have fun and insists that we have some, too. For most of "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams" we do, but the sequel is a balkier, less funny and less focused ride than last year's unexpectedly zippy original. During a recent preview, there were spy kids on screen and squirmy kids in the seats.

The first "Spy Kids" held a tight bead on themes of sibling love and the glories of family, coating its antics in sweet purpose. Made largely in Austin, "SK2" starts with similar intimate intentions before spinning wide into generic adventure, landing on the familiar, creature-infested island of collective movie memory. Bits from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" and "Jurassic Park" blow in on the guiltless winds of homage. The movie becomes a series of terrific-looking episodes that, lacking a consistent soulfulness, scatter like a pearl necklace without a string.

In part one, the titular children sneakily assumed secret agent status to save their spy parents, and the world, from destruction. Here, our height-challenged heroes -- Carmen Cortez (winsome Alexa Vega) and little brother Juni (Daryl Sabara, red curls and vanilla spunk) -- have been promoted to midlevel agents in the new Spy Kids arm of the Office of Strategic Services, where Mom and Dad (Carla Gugino and a charmingly game Antonio Banderas) work.

Infected by the disease of adolescence, Carmen's appetites have turned toward bigger missions and the cute smile of snotty rival spy kid Gary Giggles (Matt O'Leary), who works with his little spy sister Gerti (Emily Osment). Meanwhile, Gary and Gerti's father, Donnagon (Austin cartoon king Mike Judge), has duped his way to become the head of OSS, a title rightfully belonging to papa Cortez.

The crosscurrents of rivalry and duplicity lead Carmen and Juni to again take it upon their gadget-freighted selves to rescue the world from the tools of malevolence. They must retrieve a fancy device from a mysterious volcanic island and return it to the president of the United States before Donnagon gets his crooked hands on it.

Rodriguez puts forth a rudimentary adventure and pads it well. He rejiggers cliches and festoons archetypes with Silly String and neon Christmas lights. Every fold and nook has a comic book plushness, and characters move in big, pop-out gestures. The screen probably emits ultraviolet rays.

Sensory overload is exactly the point, yet at the center thumps a very big heart, spreading love and family values over even the creepiest chimeras in Rodriguez's bestiary (a photo-finish between the half-bull, half-frog -- bullfrog, get it? -- or the half-fish, half-cow, part of an exuberant digital tribute to Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion beasties).

A former cartoonist at the Daily Texan, Rodriguez is a sketch pad demon who creates nearly all of the spy gadgets in his films: the Hover-Shoes; Nanotechnology Spy Watches that do everything but tell time; a dragonfly-shaped submarine; and RALPH, a beetle robot that can gather surveillance and knot a bow tie with equal flair.

The big news, of course, is that Rodriguez shot "SK2" entirely on high-definition digital video, not film -- something only George Lucas has done with "Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones." It's a cheaper medium and depending on whom you talk to, it can look galaxies better than celluloid.

"SK2" does look wonderful. Digital allows the director to pull off more tricks for less cost and to clutter the screen with endless effects. It's largely seamless, but there are glitches. Many of the green-screen backgrounds bear a fakey shimmer, and it's always obvious when outdoor scenes were shot in a studio, because the lighting of the characters is all wrong. Still, without digital magic, we wouldn't see a giant spaceship loop around our Capitol on a starry night.

Indeed, the movie bursts with gravitation -- floating, flying, flipping. And yet "SK2" doesn't always levitate. Expository business and flat-footed jokes bog it down. More to the point, themes of family unity feel suspiciously grafted on and nearly get lost in the clamor. (The appearance of Ricardo Montalban and Holland Taylor as the grandparents arrives as an afterthought.) But a little sloppiness is the hallmark of passion. The "Spy Kids" movies -- a third is in the works -- are Rodriguez's labors of love, deeply personal visions uncorrupted by a Hollywood machine that certainly would have tidied the films into pre-tested tablets. The films look and feel like no other family movies out there. They have personality, verve, strangeness. And for that, we're thankful.

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