SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD (2011)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Robert Rodriguez's attempt to reboot the SPY KIDS franchise eight years later was not a box-office success, but it's the only one I mildly liked. It's not something I would have watched again except for purposes of review, but it does exemplify what I said in the previous SK review: that the writer-director finally did learn the difference between "stupid-wacky" and "clever-wacky."

The opening setup for SK4 alone is far more inventive than anything in the other films, suggesting to me that Rodriguez managed to improve his talent for the absurd in movies like ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO and the first SIN CITY movie. This time the mother of the eponymous kids-- specifically, "step-kids"-- gets equal time, as embodied by lady spy Marissa (Jessica Alba, reunited with the director after both SIN CITY and MACHETE). Marissa is the hitherto-unmentioned sister of Gregorio Cortez, and thus the aunt of Carmen and Juni (who both make minor crossover appearances to support the new franchise). And this time Marissa keeps her spy-dentity secret from both her husband (Joel McHale) and Rebecca and Cecil, his kids by his first (and deceased) wife. Marissa is first seen capturing a super-villain named "Tick Tock" even though she has to endure labor pains while driving a super-fast car and battling henchmen.

A year later, Marissa has stepped down from her duties in order to raise her toddler, as well as trying, not successfully, to bond with her stepchildren. Her hubby, just to add to the faux-irony, is a TV "spy-hunter," who of course has no idea he lives with a secret agent woman. Then time begins to run backward, albeit in slow increments. A new villain, The Timekeeper, has unleashed a secret doomsday weapon, though the genesis of the time-stopping device is muddled at best.  

The Timekeeper's forces attack Marissa's house for some doodad, and this provides the justification for Cecil and Rebecca to learn that they are "step-spy-kids." After various twists and turns, it's up to Marissa, her three kids and the original (now twenty-something) heroes to foil the Timekeeper. Oh, and they have a robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais, and yes, Rodriguez works in another cameo for Danny Trejo. The director's design sense is no better than it ever was, and the two new kids are no better or worse than the originals. But both the humor and the pacing is better overall. Alexa Vega gets to fight in one scene, but Alba has more presence in her two scenes. The Timekeeper has a better than average motive for his destructive actions. though calling him the best villain in the series is faint praise.          

SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER (2003)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Robert Rodriguez meant this to be the final flick in the SPY KIDS series. I said before that he must have known he couldn't keep the franchise going as the two main actors aged out of their roles, but what he cobbled together for his finale was even less compelling than the first two films in the series.

I have dim memories of having seen part of this movie in a theater, sans 3D glasses-- and since I can't believe I would have paid even Dollar Movie prices to see this, I must have "theater-jumped," possibly to see what Sly Stallone was doing in a particularly- insipid kiddie flick. I mention this to say that I did not experience the movie's 3D effects, though I've read that they were not well-regarded.

This time Rodriguez discards all attempts to ground things even in "superspy reality." A super-villain named the Toymaker (Stallone) has been incarcerated in the real world, possibly thanks to the efforts of Valentin (Ricardo Montalban), grandfather of Carmen and Juni. But the evildoer has constructed a virtual game that has some capacity to take over everyone's 's minds, so the OSS sent Carmen Cortez's virtual self into the game to investigate. Carmen disappears, so the OSS appeals to her brother Juni-- who left the agency for contrived reasons-- to come back and find his sister, and to save the planet. After a handful of VR adventures, VR-Juni gets a lifeline to the real world for one assistant, and he calls up Valentin-- who, though wheelchair-bound in the real world, can become a virtual superhero in cyberspace. Then Juni and Valentin have various adventures, find Carmen halfway through the movie, and Valentin confronts the Toymaker. who is responsible for Valentin losing his legs. Will Grandpa take bloody vengeance upon the Toymaker? Yeah, rhetorical question.

The difficulty of all three of the original three movies is that Rodriguez thinks he's being "clever-wacky" when he's really being "stupid-wacky," and plainly he didn't know the difference. Since he made his film debut in 1992, he'd never done a full-fledged comedy, and his lack of ability to script a good one shows. He also was overly indulgent to performers he liked. While Stallone was nominated for a Razzie due to his mugging performance, actors like Sabara and Montalban were worse, delivering their dopey dialogue with no charm whatever. Gugino, Banderas, Marin and Trejo are barely in the movie. But at least Rodriguez could justify bringing them into the chaos, whereas it's obvious he just included other characters from the first two films because he liked them and/or the actors.

However, something good (in the view of this not-kid viewer) finally came of this tedious, cringe-worthy franchise-- as I'll address in the next review.  

    

SPY KIDS 2 (2002)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Robert Rodriguez didn't let any grass grow under his feet once the first SPY KIDS made bank: the next one came out the next year. Apart from striking while the iron was hot, the producer/director/writer faced a certain limitation as to how long his central characters could fill the role as "kids." 

Plot-wise ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS is more of the same as #1, even to sending Carmen and Juni Cortez to an island full of weird things. (In interviews Rodriguez cited Harryhausen as an inspiration, but Roidriguez would have to work much harder to come close to Harryhausen's unique charm.) I did think the visuals looked more vivid than they did in the first film, particularly in an opening carnival scene, and I assumed the director had spent more money. Instead, cost-conscious Robert made ISLAND for the same money but reached out to startup effects-houses. This resulted in the carnival-ride "The Juggler," a completely improbable device that throws its riders (encased within compartments) into the air like juggling-balls. I'll at least remember that visual better than all the CGI monsters on the lost-dream island.

ISLAND moves faster thanks to having dispensed with the superficial setup of the first film, and goes the extra mile by claiming that, in the space of a year, Carmen and Juni so impressed the OSS that now the agency not only employs other spy kids but have also instituted a "Spy Kid of the Year" tradition. Though this is even sillier than the Juggler-ride, it gives the mediocre kid-heroes a pair of age-appropriate professional opponents, Gary and Gerti Giggles-- though I deduct points for using the name "Giggles" for characters who are not specifically humorous. Gerti (Emily Osment) is a pre-teen like Juni, while Gary (Matt O'Leary) is in the middle-teen range of Carmen, and becomes her first crush as well as a professional rival. When it comes out that the two rival spy-kids are implicated in the world-conquest plans of their father (Mike Judge in an underwritten villain-role), Carmen has one funny line: "I think I can change him" (the boy, not his dad). But as performers I still found Vega and Sabara charmless.

This time, Vega is the only "fighting female" in the house-- albeit only briefly-- because her mom and dad, as played by Gugino and Banderas, are stuck in a tedious side-story, where the mother's parents (Holland Taylor and Ricardo Montalban) tag along and interfere with the parents' efforts to rescue their kids. Rodriguez had already shown in the first movie his tendency to load the series with performers just because he liked them (Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin), and as memory serves, the third flick in the series gets even worse in that department.          

SPY KIDS (2001)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I'm going to try reviewing all four films in this franchise, but they're going to be short reviews because this series is SO not aimed at me. In fact, I can't say that it would have been my kind of thing had I been born a Millennial. I'm sure I liked a fair amount of ephemeral junk in my pre-adolescent years, and on the whole I like movies about superspies better than movies about real, mundane spies. And I can just barely tolerate flicks starring high-schoolers as covert operatives. But somehow I think that even when I myself was a middle-schooler, middle-school spies would have been a bridge too far.

The biggest flaw of the first SPY KIDS is that, even though writer-director Robert Rodriguez was going for what he described as a blend of James Bond and Willy Wonka, the first half of the first KIDS takes too much time trying to lend verisimilitude to the goofy concept. Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez are retired superspies who seem to have a flawless life, except for the fact that their middle-schoolers don't know anything of their heroic pasts. But I found that during the setup I thought adult actors Banderas and Gugino had far better chemistry than the two destined "spy kids," Carmen (Alexa Vega, 13) and Juni (Daryl Sabara, 9). The kid-performers weren't terrible, but they also weren't overly charismatic.

The plot is routine. Gregorio and Ingrid come out of retirement to face a threat of a kids' show performer who has invented hordes of killer robots, mostly with the faces of famous children-- as well as both Carmen and Juni, for some reason. The wacky Wonka-esque inventor Floop (a mug-happy Alan Cumming) is really more thoughtless than fiendish, so Rodriguez has to introduce three more villainous types to compensate, played by Robert Patrick, Teri Hatcher and Tony Shahloub. The action is routine too, and the only time the two adult spies get to fight, Rodriquez cuts away from the action--even though he revels in a long sequence of the two kids battling their robot doubles. 

Obviously, the film was successful, so it reached its target audience. I can only say that despite the director's passion for children's films, I've yet to see one I thought really good. Said passion does make me wonder what sort of kid-vids he liked as a youngling, though.         

KUNG FU PANDA 3 (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Not surprisingly, the simple PANDA formula began to show some cracks in its facade by the third film. No #3 is still a reasonably entertaining variation on that simple theme, but it helps not to look too hard at some things.

This time the main villain is tied not to Po or to Shifu but the turtle Oogwai, who in the first film named Po as the Dragon Warrior and then ascended to another spiritual plane. In PANDA 3 we learn that all is not peaceful on that higher plane, for Oogwai encounters an old enemy, General Kai (a yak), whom Oogwai consigned to the spirit world for his crimes. (I guess for small tyke-viewers, "sent to the spirit world" sounds less grievous than "killed.") Kai was exiled because he'd learned the technique of stealing "chi" from other masters. But living in the spirit-world has done nothing to cool Kai's conquering temperament, and he's already stolen a lot of chi from other ascended masters when he crosses paths with Oogwai. Kai defeats Oogwai and steals enough chi to re-enter the mortal world-- though Oogwai predicts that the Dragon Warrior shall defeat Kai's evil.

By total coincidence, Shifu decides to retire from teaching martial arts, and he appoints Po as the new teacher to students who know more than Po does. Hijinks ensue, and for good measure Shifu also informs the panda that having achieved inner peace (in the second film) is not enough; that his next step must be mastering the power of chi-manipulation. 

On top of that, Po finally meets Li, the birth-father he never knew, and Ping, who regards himself as Po's real father, seethes with jealousy of Po's new dad. Po also has an excuse to hang out with Li in that Li claims that he and his panda-tribe are masters of chi, so they can complete the next stage of Po's training. However, Li actually doesn't possess the skill, and his excuse for lying stands as one of the most cockamamie in cinematic history-- not least because he knows that General Kai will eventually cross chi-swords with Po, which could result in the death of Li's cherished son.

Perhaps worse than all this plotting-by-convenience is that none of the pandas Po meets are slightly memorable as characters, including Li. The pandas were all tiresome and made me wish for more scenes devoted to the Furious Five, who were simple comedy-types that still had some individuality. The evil Kai is the least interesting villain of the first three movies, and even his primary gimmick-- being able to change his enemies into obedient "jade zombies"-- adds no luster to the film. The climactic face-off between Kai and Po is decently staged, but getting there is not half the fun one might expect it to be.

             

KUNG FU PANDA 2 (2011)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Once the first PANDA hit big, the filmmakers stuck close to what worked for both the second and third films: raucous cartoon chopsocky violence with a side-dish of Eastern wisdom. 

In the first film, the story arc of Po the Panda (Jack Black) concerned his efforts to become a kung-fu fighter, though fate-- and the will of the turtle-oracle Oogwai-- threw Po into the deep end of the pool, by promoting him as the destined "Dragon Warrior." In choosing this destiny, Po forswears dedicating himself to the noodle-shop run by his adoptive father Ping (a goose who never informs Po as to his non-goose heritage). But Ping is not the source of conflict: the "heavy father" figure is supplied by Shifu, who puts Po through many rigors before finally conceding that Po deserves his status. Shifu is also, like Ping, an adoptive father, but his "son" became a menace, whom Po must defeat. In essence the first film completes Shifu's arc and he's only of modest importance in the second and third films.

The good news re: No #2 is that while the writers might have chosen to make Po's second "big bad" another kung-fu bully-boy, they crafted a much more ingenious villain this time, one linked to the circumstances that orphaned Po. Having the villain of an anthropomorphic kung-fu flick be a peacock, a delicate-looking bird, might seem counter-intuitive. But the writers shift the conflict to one of weaponry rather than hand-to-hand conflict. Villainous Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) seeks power by weaponizing his clan's discovery of gunpowder into destructive cannons, with which he plans to conquer all of Cartoon-China. But a prophecy about his being defeated by "black and white" leads him to massacre a tribe of black-and-white pandas, leading to the circumstance wherein Baby Po is adopted by Ping the Goose. As it happens, Po and his fellow martial-arts cops encounter Shen's threat at precisely the same time Po experiences existential doubts about his being the only black-and-white panda that anyone's seen in his neck of the woods.

Despite all these doubts, Po's teacher has informed him that the solution is "inner peace"-- and this is what eventually gives the warrior-panda the moxie he needs to defeat the seemingly-unbeatable cannons. The film frames the idea of spiritual transcendence as something as simple as a fortune-cookie maxim, but the movie delivers what the viewer wants: a hissable villain, who relies not on brute force but upon skills with knives (hidden within Shen's wings) and an inventive conclusion in which martial arts trumps, at least in cartoons, martial arms.

A coda establishes that Po's father is still alive after all, setting up the events of the third film.                  

ARROW: SEASON TWO (2013-14)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

It's been some time since I visited the ARROW series, possibly because I still remember how terrible the later seasons became. However, on re-watching Season Two, I think this season, more than Season One, earned the show the reputation on which those terrible late seasons coasted.

Admittedly one thing never changed about ARROW in any season: the melodramatic characterization was always cranked up to eleven. One big plotline continued from One was that Oliver Queen's mother Moira was tried for her complicity in Malcolm Merlyn's scheme to destroy an entire neighborhood. This caused erratic mood swings in both her adult children, Oliver and Thea, who varied between adoring and despising Moira, though never both in one mood at the same time. Naturally, whereas such a major trial would have taken a year or more in the real world, in the Arrow-verse it's wrapped in a few weeks, Moira is exonerated and even runs for mayor of Starling City.

A somewhat more consequential subplot involves the revelation that Thea unlike Oliver was not the natural daughter of Moira's husband but rather was conceived between Moira and Malcolm Merlyn. In the latter half of the season, Malcolm returns and successfully claims Thea as her true father, even though her initial reaction is to shoot him. The writers also devote a fair amount of time into developing a romantic arc between Oliver and his slightly wacky assistant Felicity.  But though the soap operatics are generally entertaining in the first few seasons, I'd have to say that they never got quite as good as producer Berlanti's debut superhero series, SMALLVILLE. That show also may have had more low points in its first few seasons, but I tend to prefer a show that has a greater variety of the high and low, as opposed to playing things straight down the middle.

Another positive development is that Season Two wraps up many, though maybe not all, of the "island-adventure" plotlines. These flashbacks consumed much time in Season One, showing how Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) got stuck on a not-so-deserted island, dealing with madmen in search of a scientific weapon and other castaways seeking to avoid being victimized. However, as a result of those struggles, Oliver incurs the enmity of former ally Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett), who trained the playboy in archery. Wilson, aka "Deathstroke," returns to Starling City with vengeance in mind, monomaniacally fixated on destroying everything his former pupil loves. That includes the new addition to the cast, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), who survived her apparent death at sea to become one of the League of Assassins. She incidentally becomes the program's incarnation of the comics' Black Canary, albeit called only "the Canary," and the actress is decent in the role, in marked contrast to her later acting-history.

The various shout-outs to DC characters proves at least as attractive as the well-done action-scenes. There might not be total agreement between the original characters and ARROW's reworked versions of Professor Ivo, Cyrus Gold, William Tockman and Sebastian Blood. But the reworked characters here are generally efficient at putting across good superhero melodrama. (An additional note is that Barry Allen, prior to undergoing his flashy transformation in his own show, appears in a couple of Season Two episodes, as do two of the support-characters from the proposed program.) But Manu Bennett's formidable performance as Deathstroke is Season Two's greatest asset, as is his plan to use the aforementioned super-weapon-- a drug that can make humans into super-soldiers, roughly on the Captain America level-- to make vicious killers into his shock troops against Starling City.  Given TV's budgetary limits, the showrunners made this scenario far more bracing than many higher-budgeted feature films.

My memory is that Season Three still remains decent entertainment, particularly when the Flash starts interacting with the Arrow-verse. I hope to verify that within at least the next year.