'Spy Kids' uses hi-tech means and a busy action adventure to offer an old-fashioned, conservative, pro-family message. it goes beyond the usual 'family is a sacred and inviolable unit' platitude, and suggests that families have to be worked at, that it's a daily, often violent, even traumatic struggle where nothing can be taken for granted, where enemies and chaos intrude at every corner.
Rodriguez seems to parody this message with a sub-plot about a docile army of 'Village of the Damned' robot kids who do the bidding of their master, appropriately a children's TV host, whether for good or evil. But the essential message doesn't seem to be parodied - the narrative concerns all those favourites in the pro-family genre: the father who has to prove himself worthy of his kids; the kids who have to come out of their shells; the realisation that lies and assumed roles are probably not very healthy in a family context; children should follow in the footsteps of their parents, asserting tradition; children's TV is not a good substitute for family contact and communication.
From the beginning, the spy antics are conceived as an allegory for family values - the parents' marriage is conceived and disrupted by their careers in espionage; the main narrative concerns the kids' attempts to rescue their parents and restore the home; the denouement is the scene for a family reunion. There is even a juvenile Oedipal story, where the son manages to surpass a father he was always embarrassed by.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Rodriguez wrote, directed and produced the film, so we may assume it's a theme close to his heart. For all its CGI modernity, the film's movement actually resembles those old live action Disney films about kids-in-peril (e.g. 'In search of castaways'), crossed with the old-fashioned, fetishised gadgetry and outre sets of Supermarionation; spliced, of course, with the more late-20th century likes of 'Star Wars', 'The Matrix', 'Mission Impossible 2' etc., and, hearteningly, the queasy colour schemes and various plot points from 'The City of Lost Children', which might be this film's dark double.
As in 'The Matrix', there are some pop-metaphysical pretensions, such as the scene where our heroes fight their evil doppelgangers, but this is part of the conservative message: the rupture of the family unit entails a breakdown in identity (see also the transformation of dad into a grotesque puppet thing).
In any event, we are free to ignore the message, and enjoy the film's surface (certainly, Rodriguez could argue that his message is explicitely framed as a fantasy, a bedtime story, unrealisable in the real world; that would make the tone sarcastic and in bad faith). This is underwhelming.
Too often the bold flourishes betray their CGI joins, and become the digital equivalent of those back projections in Hitchcock movies. Rodriguez admirably wants to create a world of pure 60s bubblegum artifice, but the fact of 'real' actors force logistical compromises that aren't always pretty.
This leaves the story. The script and characters are too thin, and the action too abrupt, for us to engage in their trauma. Like the usual Rodriguez film, the narrative is pretty much non-stop action, but because this is a kid's movie, the sanitised, cartoon action prohibits the usual Rodriguez tension between the ugliness of the violence and the beauty of its choreography. The sets are strange, colourful, but somehow lack inventive vividness. A Tim Burton would have accessed the story's dark centre; Rodriguez, however, provides an interesting subtext about the lingering racism suffered by the Hispanic children at their WASP school as the basis for their unhappiness.
Rodriguez seems to parody this message with a sub-plot about a docile army of 'Village of the Damned' robot kids who do the bidding of their master, appropriately a children's TV host, whether for good or evil. But the essential message doesn't seem to be parodied - the narrative concerns all those favourites in the pro-family genre: the father who has to prove himself worthy of his kids; the kids who have to come out of their shells; the realisation that lies and assumed roles are probably not very healthy in a family context; children should follow in the footsteps of their parents, asserting tradition; children's TV is not a good substitute for family contact and communication.
From the beginning, the spy antics are conceived as an allegory for family values - the parents' marriage is conceived and disrupted by their careers in espionage; the main narrative concerns the kids' attempts to rescue their parents and restore the home; the denouement is the scene for a family reunion. There is even a juvenile Oedipal story, where the son manages to surpass a father he was always embarrassed by.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Rodriguez wrote, directed and produced the film, so we may assume it's a theme close to his heart. For all its CGI modernity, the film's movement actually resembles those old live action Disney films about kids-in-peril (e.g. 'In search of castaways'), crossed with the old-fashioned, fetishised gadgetry and outre sets of Supermarionation; spliced, of course, with the more late-20th century likes of 'Star Wars', 'The Matrix', 'Mission Impossible 2' etc., and, hearteningly, the queasy colour schemes and various plot points from 'The City of Lost Children', which might be this film's dark double.
As in 'The Matrix', there are some pop-metaphysical pretensions, such as the scene where our heroes fight their evil doppelgangers, but this is part of the conservative message: the rupture of the family unit entails a breakdown in identity (see also the transformation of dad into a grotesque puppet thing).
In any event, we are free to ignore the message, and enjoy the film's surface (certainly, Rodriguez could argue that his message is explicitely framed as a fantasy, a bedtime story, unrealisable in the real world; that would make the tone sarcastic and in bad faith). This is underwhelming.
Too often the bold flourishes betray their CGI joins, and become the digital equivalent of those back projections in Hitchcock movies. Rodriguez admirably wants to create a world of pure 60s bubblegum artifice, but the fact of 'real' actors force logistical compromises that aren't always pretty.
This leaves the story. The script and characters are too thin, and the action too abrupt, for us to engage in their trauma. Like the usual Rodriguez film, the narrative is pretty much non-stop action, but because this is a kid's movie, the sanitised, cartoon action prohibits the usual Rodriguez tension between the ugliness of the violence and the beauty of its choreography. The sets are strange, colourful, but somehow lack inventive vividness. A Tim Burton would have accessed the story's dark centre; Rodriguez, however, provides an interesting subtext about the lingering racism suffered by the Hispanic children at their WASP school as the basis for their unhappiness.