FilmBlather.com

Watching Spy Kids, I thought that this is what Inspector Gadget had commercialism not triumphed over all artistic instinct. The films are somewhat similar in plot and almost identical in production design, but while Gadget was a travesty, Spy Kids is very nearly a masterpiece. Miramax, along with genre-hopping writer-director Robert Rodriguez, has stumbled on a rare, brilliant franchise, one with innumerable artistic as well as money-making possibilities. It's also, amazingly enough, a true family film.

Carmen, Juni, Ingrid and Gregorio Cortez are a perfectly normal family, with one exception. Unbeknownst to little Carmen and Juni, their parents (Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas) are ex-super-spies who still maintain connections to their former organization after the kids go to sleep. It happens that all of Gregorio's former spy partners have been kidnapped by evil kiddie show host Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming) and genetically mutated into bizarre-looking characters on his program. Reluctantly, he and Ingrid speed off to the rescue, leaving the kids in the care of their uncle, who turns out not to be their uncle at all.

When the parents are captured, it's up to Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara) to save them from Fegan, his evil assistant Alexander Minion (Tony Shalhoub) and their army of Village of the Damned-style demon children. Like any good international spies, they have an endless array of gadgets and stuntmen at their disposal, which means the kids get to play James Bond while saving their parents' lives.

Sound dumb? It's not. Spy Kids is a fun, fun 90 minutes at the movies. It's mindless entertainment, yes, but the creativity behind it can make you think. Rodriguez, famous for horror films like From Dusk 'Till Dawn and The Faculty, reportedly put most of the special effects together on his home computer, but they look fantastic; there's nothing particularly eye-popping here, but the giddy color palette and the better-than-Bond spy gadgets are enough to keep anyone's attention.

Thankfully, Rodriguez also has the rare gift of making an action scene suspenseful for adults while keeping it not too scary for kids. There's nothing in this PG-rated adventure to make even a five-year-old flinch and yet I found myself sliding to the edge of my seat numerous times, as well as applauding after our protagonists' victories. As the film flies forward, it finds more and more inventive ways to show us, to entertain us, to make us laugh.

And oh, Spy Kids does have a sense of humor. Most importantly, it has a sense of humor about itself. This is pretty cheesy stuff, but the film strikes the tricky balance of playing the material straight for the younger crowd and winking from the corner of the screen for the rest of us. So when the final message -- about the importance of keeping a family together -- came around, I not only bought it, but found it downright edifying. Maybe I was just caught off-guard.

There's too much of a tendency to dismiss films like Spy Kids (as well as books like Harry Potter) as simple kids' stuff when, in fact, some of them are much more than that. Film lovers with an open mind, no matter how old, are urged to give this one a try.