Spy Kids: Armageddon
By Sioph LealSpy Kids is a beloved franchise dating back to the early 2000s that playfully showed the reversal of family structure when the kids are forced to get along as they rescue their parents from an evil force. The first movie had an array of gadgets and a fun plot with a playful dynamic carried by the two young leads and a memorable assortment of characters. If that is what you are expecting with Spy Kids: Armageddon, think again.
When the children of two secret agents unknowingly help a game developer unleash a technology controlling virus, they are forced to rescue their parents and save the world. This time around, the Tango-Torrez family lead with parents Terrence (Zachary Levi) and Nora (Gina Rodriguez) with their children Tony (Connor Esterson) and Patty (Everly Carganilla). The kids are younger than the original and although they held the most promise, were let down by bad direction and a plot that felt like a lazy rip from the first Spy Kids movie. The main conflict in the movie? Technology. There’s a heavy-handed message throughout the movie that people rely on technology too much and a running, tired, joke that adults can’t play video games and that is why the kids are able to become spies. There’s nothing of substance, no close relationship between the family members other than forced and clunky dialogue and moments that seem out of pace to the narrative structure that hinders any chemistry within the Tango-Torrez family. At no point do they feel like they are a family.
The entire movie is rushed, and time wasted on pointless plots with no stakes that feels so minimal to what anyone would expect of a Spy Kids movie. Normally, a compelling villain will save the day or an eccentric one like Floop in the original but Rey “The King” Kingston (Billy Magnussen) is underutilised, feels like he was shoehorned in as a late addition rather than a threat.
It is as if every stage of the film was rushed in a lazy dash to reignite Robert Rodriguez’s successful original movie. There are moments that can be described as playing homage to the original, but it comes off as a sluggish attempt to shoehorn in a nostalgic moment despite the target audience clearly being small children. What made the original work was that it appealed to everyone. Even now, it can be enjoyed by adults and children, but I doubt either of those would find this movie entertaining. On top of that, the movie is roughly 27 minutes too long with those remaining minutes suddenly adding in a videogame world as a cheapened version of Spy Kids 3D with a half-hearted reused plot.
Spy Kids is known for its distinctive creative style from the Thumb-Thumbs to Floop’s creatures, it didn’t look amazing but there was a charm to it that worked well. It seemed there was not much CGI used which worked in helping create the world feel rounded, but that lacks in the latest instalment. There are CGI robots that look hastily made and something from the late 90s rather than 2023 that distracts from the world instead of adding to it. Considering this movie is about gamers saving the world, one thing that highlights the lack of effort in this movie is when the two children play Hyscore together. Patty clearly plays with two Nintendo JoyCon’s and Tony, while playing with his sister, plays on a Xbox controller. It shows the lack of thought. When the Nintendo Switch Lite is a clear feature in the first part of the movie and is what saves the children’s lives during a chase (I’m not kidding), you’d think Nintendo must have paid for product placement but with the addition of the Xbox controller, it stands to reason that is not the case but another example of a production with a lack of effort or detail.
Watching the movie, it could have worked far better as a series. The family relationships could have been expanded more, there could have been more opportunity for the spy gadgets that lacked in this iteration, and it would have given a chance for a creative plot instead of a knockoff version of Rodriguez’s first spy movie.