Absolutely the worst movie.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids has a very special significance for me: it's the first movie I ever saw in theatres, and therefore left quite an impression on me. It has loads of Rodriguez's trademark imagination and vision, as well as a stacked cast and a whimsical sense of adventure that makes it a super charged Saturday morning cartoon style bucket of fun. Rodriguez makes two types of films: shamelessly violent, over the top, bloody genre fun, and family orientated sci fi/fantasy for kids. He fares better in the former, as this is really the only good one in the secondary category. The sequels are trash, and I don't know what he was thinking with Sharkboy and Lava Girl, but with this one his filmmaking skill and passion for the craft work its charm and provide a wonderful experience. Newcomers Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara play youngsters Carmen and Juni Cortez, who are surprised to learn that their unassuming parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are in fact lethal undercover spies, and need their help after being kidnapped by eccentric megalomaniac Floop (Alan Cumming hamming it up terrifically). Aided by their uncles Felix (Cheech Marin) and Machete (Danny Trejo) they embark on a dazzling adventure to find Floop's surreal, isolated palace, take down baddies Ms. Gredanko (Teri Hatcher) and Mr. Lisp (Robert Patrick) and save their parents. The four have amazing chemistry as a familial unit, especially when it comes time to kick major butt. The practical based effects have a wondrous vitality, from the Thumb Thumb henchman to the eye boggling, Terry Gilliam-esque realm that Floop resides in. There's also work from Tony Shaloub, Mike Judge, Richard Linklater and a sly cameo from George Clooney. No shortage of imagination, creativity and fun.

Spy kids was one of the worst things ever made. This is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. It is absolute SH*T!! Let's discuss the many problems this movie has. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.1. It's really boring. If you've seen the movie you know it looks fun but it is more boring than sitting on a rock.2. AWFUL special effects. Between the hand minion things and the water. Most of the effects make me want to shove forks in my eyes.3. The whole movie doesn't matter. What the f*ck. If you watch this you are wasting humanity.4. The acting. Antonio Banderas is a good actor but he is wasting his time in this sh*t hole.If you like this movie...fine. But it is a piece of sh*t you could catch any number of diseases if you hold the case for one second to long. Save humanity take the disc, dip it in the toilet. Crack it make it suffer bury it until it makes it's way to hell.OK I'm over reacting. It is a piece of sh*t.THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly, I don't know where to start. I first saw this movie when I was nine years old, and it insulted my intelligence then. Having just seen a few fragments recently while my younger siblings were watching it, I decided to do a comprehensive criticism of exactly WHY it was so terrible. And let me tell you, there are plenty of reasons. Here are my top three.Number One: StoryOkay, so the concept of "Parents were spies, kids find out, have to rescue parents before plot to take over the world is successful," isn't actually ALL terrible. It has some holes, and is admittedly pretty cheesy, but isn't so bad, if executed right. Unfortunately, this movie wasn't executed right, for several reasons. First off, where the Tartarus did the script writer get the gods-awful idea to make the villain a kids TV show star?!? Yes, a sadistic, Burton-esque, disturbing kids show which uses mutated spies as it's actors, (more on that later) but seriously? What the heck? I seriously want to know what Muse (or lack thereof) whispered in your ear to have produced this bizarre monstrosity. Why did you choose to make the generic, faceless henchmen into THUMB PEOPLE? Why is your army of indestructible automatons disguised to look like children? Why did you have to make his base a fun house that seemed to have been designed by MC Escher in the middle of the ocean? Why are your supercomputers designed to look like little deformed cyborg brains? (perhaps to resemble the minds of the producers of this movie?) WHY?!? *Ahem, sorry.* Second reason: this movie brought the art of the cliché to an all-new level. Seriously, when my friend and I were watching this, we literally predicted EVERY plot twist. Keep in mind that we were nine-year-olds."Oh look, there's a bad guy who serves the Demon Tellytubbies show guy! I'll bet he's the REAL bad guy, and has some connection with their parent's past!" or "Oh, look, they introduced Uncle Machete, but he doesn't want to help. I wonder how long we'll last until he shows up to save the day?" And so on and so forth. In all, they could have done WAY better with the storyline, which was pretty much just crap.Number Two: Special FX Really guys, did you even try to make these effects look real? I'm all for CG animation, but honestly, you could have gotten better animation results from my 11th grade Graphic's Design class, and we were only using Photoshop! For example, during the scene when Mom and Dad Cortez drove their submarine car off a cliff, there was a glaringly visible change from real car to CG-ed car. All of the other fanciful technology (Escape Sub, Jetpacks, Thumb-Thumbs, Movie Room in Fruit-Loop Guy's castle, etc) was obviously green-screened. The lighting and shading was all off, the coloration was garish, gaudy, and generally crappy, and overall, the animation looked like a bunch of circus clowns came in and covered everything in overly polished balloon latex. It looked that fake. And don't get me started on the crummy rubber suits they did for the mutated spies. Really peoples? To quote the internet term, "DERP." Number Three: Psychological Damage I swear, as a nine-year old, this movie didn't die in my mind easily. Even now, many many years later, it still disturbs me. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I saw Lord of the Rings around the same time, and the grisly orcs didn't even make me bat an eye. Yet the Burton-esque feel to the main villain was just too much for me, and the floating eyeballs, mutated dudes with their overly happy squeaking and tittering, and tinkly music-box music didn't help. Seriously, overly cheerful and bizarre kids shows are the stuff of nightmare. It seems like they went all out to make this particular aspect as weird and disturbing as possible, and I really can't understand why. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't SCARY or intense or thrilling like a spy movie should be, it was just WEIRD. Sort of the creepy weirdness that's usually associated with clowns or carousel music. It just felt out of place and frankly, I'm surprised no-one else has sued this company for psychologically scarring their kids. I don't know how to describe it, I just was seriously weirded out by this factor.In all, this movie is scraping the barrel when it comes to entertainment, which is why I'm depressed that some relatively prominent actors like Antonio Banderas lowered their dignity and restating by participating in this blot on the name of film. Maybe they signed on before they realized what they were getting into, I don't know. The acting was the only commendable part of this film, which frankly wasn't much to work with. Kudos to you, the actors for a good effort, but not good enough to salvage this shipwreck. My only thought is that the gods must hate humanity to allow this monstrosity to exist. Which gods, you ask? ALL THE GODS! May mercy be had upon the souls of those who spawned forth this crime against art.

I was in my early teens when this movie came out, and I can't remember exactly how I first heard about it, but I don't think that happened until a few years later. It has now been several years since I first heard of "Spy Kids", but I was far from eager to watch it. I knew it was a kiddie spy flick, like "Agent Cody Banks", and even though it's been several years since I last saw that 2003 release, I can still remember being put off by its cheesiness. I would probably still be ignoring this 2001 kiddie spy flick if it weren't for renowned cartoonist and filmmaker Mike Judge in the cast, as small as his role here is. This movie generally isn't considered atrocious, but I knew it would be at least somewhat cheesy, so I was not surprised by its overall mediocrity.Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez were once enemy spies from different countries, sent to kill each other, but when they met, they soon ended up falling in love, getting married, and semi-retiring from the spy business. Nine years later, they are now the parents of two children, Carmen and Juni, who are both unaware of their parents' past. The two Cortez parents return to their spy jobs after several other spies go missing, and it looks like a children's TV show called "Floop's Fooglies" could be responsible! They leave Uncle Felix Gumm with the kids and set out to investigate. The two secret agents are soon captured on their mission, and when this happens, an alarm goes off in the Cortez home and the place is invaded! Uncle Felix tells Carmen and Juni the truth, which is that their parents are spies and he is not really their uncle. The two young siblings manage to escape, and set out to work as spies themselves and save their parents! As well as being an action adventure film, this is also supposed to be a comedy, but absolutely nothing made me laugh, and I guess a couple parts made me smile, but hardly even did that! The "Now flushing your poop" part is an example of juvenile kiddie humour in the movie, and it's also certainly not amusing watching the conflict between the Cortez siblings, with the name calling and such. The story didn't really grab me for the most part, either. I found the first 25 minutes of the film or so to be consistently dull (including the part showing how two enemy spies just suddenly changed their minds when they met), and later, I did find SOME adrenaline in it, thanks to the action, but not enough to distract me from the flaws. I didn't really care much for any of the characters, and Alan Cumming's performance in the role of Fegan Floop is rather weak. I could tell that this character was supposed to be one of the more comical ones, but he just provides more failed attempts at humour for the already unfunny film. The special effects in "Spy Kids" are great, but special effects aren't everything.This 2001 kiddie spy flick apparently turned out to be a success, and was followed by "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams" in 2002 and "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over" in 2003. After a long break, it appears the franchise is about to return with another sequel called "Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World" coming up, one by Robert Rodriguez, just like the first three. However, I doubt I'll be watching any of these, as watching the original "Spy Kids" didn't capture my interest well enough. Now, maybe a 6/10 for this movie wouldn't be too much from me, due to the reasonably suspenseful parts (it may be a bit better than "Agent Cody Banks"), but in the end, it still left me with an underwhelming feeling. There's a good chance I would have liked this movie as a kid, but many adult viewers have also clearly enjoyed it. I won't say it's strictly for kids, but you should know what you're in for, and it's unsurprisingly a little cheesy.