The Goods: Film Reviews
We Can Be Heroes, the Robert Rodriguez return to family entertainment, is not quite good, but it is far more competent and watchable than I feared, especially given the car crash that was the Spy Kids reboot.
I did not watch Machete and think “that movie left a lot on the table.”
There were certainly worse ideas in 2011 than rebooting the Spy Kids franchise. It’s a film concept that’s easy to refresh: recruit a new batch of charming kid actors, update the gadgets for the new era, weave in some family values, and spin up a kooky spy-fi premise.
Calling The Adevntures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl “ugly” is a grave understatement.
Machete isn’t strictly a Spy Kids spinoff.
A movie I like slightly less each time I see it, and now I’m up to four times, I think.
I haven’t seen Grindhouse, but my understanding is that it works as more than the sum of its parts, crafting a fantasy B-movie universe to dive into.
Nathan Rabin’s legendary My Year of Flops feature on AV Club groups bad movies into three categories:
Spy Kids 1 delivered on multiple competing genre fronts: a family-bonding adventure, a kiddie spy-action thriller, a light satire, and a digital editing/CGI showcase. Overall, a precarious, well-executed balancing act.
Spy Kids is, if not quite a gold standard for family-focused action-comedies, certainly an excellent specimen.