Given the mistakes Robert Rodriguez makes with Spy Kids 3D:
Game Over, one hopes it's just a trilogy and not a full-fledged
franchise. Busting with everything that mars most other family action
fare, as well as a poorly-conceived return of a desperate and outdated
exhibition gimmick, the picture is pretty much exactly what most
people feared the first Spy Kids might be, but worse.
The film starts okay and goes bad quickly. Burned once too often
by the OSS, Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) has gone solo. No longer
a spy, Juni works as a gumshoe, solving mysteries for pint-sized
dames. Ideawise this works, but right from the gate that Rodriguez
spark is missing. The framing is still strong, but not striking.
The wit is there, but not all that sharp. Worst of all, none of
the editing is there.
Rodriguez burst onto the scene as an economical ball of energy.
He looked like the savior for of film just as the digital demon
was starting to stir. Not a review of his debut, El Mariachi,
could be written without dwelling on that mythical figure of $7,000
dollars. Then he turned around and made Desperado, a 35 million
dollar movie that actually, only cost a fifth of that. With his
next few he was shaping up to be a director that who understood
that it's about cutting film- not checks.
None of that promise exists in Spy Kids 3D. This lumbering
blue-screened dud feels more like a Disney Channel Original movie
with a bigger budget and less entertainment. Maybe the 3D equipment
doesn't allow Rodriguez the movement he's used to. Maybe he was
too distracted thinking about Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
Maybe his change to digital has actually withered his soul.
The plot revolves around Juni getting drawn back in to the OSS
to save his sister Carmen (Alexa Vega), who has been lost in a virtual
game world. As soon as Juni enters the game, the audience dons their
3D glasses and no real fun begins. The game is to go online at midnight;
Juni must find Carmen and shut down the game before then, without
freeing the evil Toymaker who has designed the game. The Toymaker
(Sylvester Stallone) has been imprisoned by the OSS in the game
world for many years, or something like that. It's not all that
clear, as he has been able to design and market a game in the real
world, as well as star in commercials for it.
As
a villain the Toymaker is fairly ineffective. He spends his time
in some control room doing his best Wicked Witch of the West, peering
into the crystal ball thing and arguing with his three companions,
himself. In a turn that will hopefully guarantee he will never attempt
comedy again, Stallone plays the Toymaker along with the three aspects
of his personality. There's the Warlike Toymaker, the Scientist
Toymaker, and the Hippie Toymaker and they are all played with the
taut comedic precision that we have come to expect from the star
of Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
On his way through the game, Juni meets some Beta testing kids
and calls on the aid of his Grandpa (Ricardo Montalban). Wheelchair
bound outside of the game, Montalban's head strains atop an oversized
CG body for the rest of the picture. It's a disconcerting image
that almost makes one forget his rubber chest from Wrath of Kahn.
The game itself is obviously the least thought-out portion of a
poorly thought-out film. It's a non-gamer's idea of what a videogame
is like: disparate locations and puzzles that are solved seconds
after they are uncovered, mindless robot fights and even more mindless
races. Like the picture itself, this game is clumsy spectacle with
little to no story to justify lame set pieces.
This
is the curse of 3D. Basically, most 3D films are just regular bad
movies that occasionally pause the action and the story to swipe
at the audiences' faces for no real reason aside from a cheap goose.
The problem is the rest of the time, you're just watching a movie
through a red lens and a blue one. This means you're only seeing
in two tones, and the image is indistinct and murky.
On top of all this heap clumsy and forced references to Lord of
the Rings and The Matrix to no great effect. There's some lesson
about family for Juni to learn, except that he doesn't really learn
it. Someone tells him a lesson and he remembers it later. All of
the characters from the previous films show up and it's nice to
see them but they mostly pop in for the last few minutes in a tossed
off ending that makes Desperado's seem overly complex and
drawn out. Misfiring in almost every aspect, Spy Kids 3D
is at least a contender for the biggest drop off of quality from
an original to a sequel.