Review: Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D

I remember the delighted surprise of seeing the original Spy Kids with a friend one Sunday afternoon ten years ago. I didn't know who Robert Rodriguez was, didn't know much about the Austin film scene at all, but we'd heard the movie was fun even for grownups and gave it a try. It was a little silly with a few eye-rollingly juvenile jokes but much better than we'd expected. And the problem I've had subsequent Spy Kids movies has been that they simply don't measure up to the experience of the first.

Possibly if I were nine years old and hadn't watched any of the previous movies in the series, I might enjoy watching Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D. Not being in those circumstances, I can't be sure. But I think even my childhood self would get impatient and annoyed by the last 30 minutes of the film. On the other hand, my grownup self quite liked the first 20 minutes or so and is sorry the movie couldn't sustain that tone.

Also, I was disappointed by a shocking lack of Danny Trejo, who is billed high on IMDb for this movie but appears in a single blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World opens with a grand high-speed car chase through downtown Austin (surprisingly free of traffic) in which an extremely pregnant spy, Marissa Wilson (Jessica Alba) is determined to chase down her nemesis Tick Tock before a) he destroys the world and b) she gives birth. Her husband Wilbur (Joel McHale) doesn't know she's a spy and is offering helpful Lamaze breathing advice as she careens down Congress in a nifty little spy vehicle.

Unfortunately, this sequence is the best part of the movie, which then skips ahead a year. Marissa has retired and still hasn't told her family about her secret spy existence, but is instead raising her one-year-old daughter along with the two children from her husband's previous marriage: Rebecca (Rowan Blanchard) and Cecil (Mason Cook). Rebecca in particular can't stand her stepmom. Meanwhile, Wilbur is starring as a "spy hunter" in a local reality show and needs to find some actual spies. One thing leads to another, Tick Tock and his boss the Time Keeper are about to launch an Armegeddon device, Marissa needs to save the world, and of course Rebecca and Cecil get inadvertently pulled into the spy adventures.

At this point, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World should grow particularly thrilling ... and doesn't. The movie bogs down in too much explanatory dialogue, most of it awkwardly written and delivered. Alexa Vega, returning as a grown-up Carmen Cortez, gets the worst of this -- her role is primarily to explain things to the kids onscreen and in the audience who haven't seen the previous Spy Kids movies. It's a waste of an actress whom I have seen do far better work -- even the stupidly obvious lyrics she had to sing in Repo! The Genetic Opera weren't this clunky. 

In addition, the last half-hour of the movie is hampered by frequent, repetitive lessons and morals for the audience that hammer down like a migraine during a Michael Bay movie. Again, I understand this is a movie for kids, and I withstood a whole lot of stupid poop and barf jokes under that assumption, but no kid wants to be lectured at by a movie. The biggest laugh from the kid-filled audience at the screening I attended was during a sequence of pranks in the first half-hour of the movie.

The climactic action scenes were actually interrupted for these moral moments -- how can a Robert Rodriguez movie have such terribly choreographed, lame action scenes? One established dweeb of a character shows up and knocks out a whole round of people ... who incidentally, were knocked out at least once before and should not really be fighting again except to prove a point with this character. It makes no sense and could have been handled much better.

I saw Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 2D, although it's also playing in 3D. You can tell which shots were made to capitalize on 3D -- frankly, just the kinds of cheesy, ridiculous things I actually like about 3D, like Cheetos flying toward the camera, and little rockets spiraling out of control. I was almost sorry I didn't give the 3D a try. The scratch-and-sniff cards that are meant to add a "fourth dimension" to the movie, however, just made me nostalgic for old John Waters movies. (Pro tip for Austin viewers: if you're eating food at Alamo during the movie, don't sniff the card.)

If you're a grownup, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World isn't going to be an entertaining movie for you to just go and watch, but it's not an intolerable movie to bring your kids to see, and clocks in at just around 90 minutes. Perhaps you'll like the steampunk-inspired design of the bad guys' costumes and lair -- one of the most visually enjoyable parts of the movie. Perhaps you'll like Jessica Alba's fight scenes, or the voice of Ricky Gervais as a talking dog. But frankly, unless you want a fun day out with the family in a movie theater, you'd do better to watch Spy Kids again.

Austin connections: Spy Kids: All the Time in the World was shot in Austin by local Troublemaker Studios. Downtown Austin is recognizable in many of the exterior scenes. The exterior of the OSS spy headquarters is the Long Center. I also spotted Royal Blue Grocery, some landmarks on Congress Ave. downtown, and of course -- it's practically a requirement for local movies -- the Frost Bank building.