'Spy Kids' is what family entertainment should be

--------------------------------------------------------------- Spy Kids, *** out of four stars Adventure/Comedy/Action, 88 minutes Starring Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Teri Hatcher. Written and Directed by Robert Rodriguez. A Dimension Films Presentation ----------------------------------------------------------------

JAKARTA (JP): Spy Kids could be the answer to our long wait for pure family entertainment. It's fun, clean and does not make viewers over the age of 13 feel incredibly stupid.

For those who are familiar with director Rodriguez's works, they are not likely to expect his latest film to be safe for small children to view. Who can forget his first wild project, the ballet of guns in El Mariachi or the Pulp Fiction-ish vampire saga From Dusk Till Dawn?

Through Spy Kids, Rodriguez proves that blood and guts are not his only tools for creating an entertaining film with his trademark: a shoestring budget. So far, he has been an inspiration for aspiring filmmakers who want to make good films, even action ones, on a limited budget.

His films often become an insult to big budget studios, which fail to come near the height of entertainment that Rodriguez offers through his small-scale productions.

His Spy Kids can be considered a direct hit to the latest big screen adaptation of Inspector Gadget, which supposedly relies on all kinds of neat gadgets but fails miserably to entertain audiences.

Spy Kids has many gadgets as well, although they are limited to clumsy looking but enjoyable-to-watch water vehicle and electromagnetic chewing gum. However, the movie's retro-look, which might be intentional or due to its limited budget, gives the film an original appearance.

The Cortez family has a tradition. At night, before the two children -- a girl named Carmen (Alexa Vega) and a boy named Juni (Carmen Sabara) -- go to bed, the girl asks her mother Ingrid (Carla Gugino) to tell her a bedtime story while Juni spends his time putting anti-wart lotion on his fingers.

And the story is about two spies who decide to perform the most difficult mission of their lives: getting married.

Without the knowledge of their children, Ingrid actually tells the real story of her and her husband Gregorio (Antonio Banderas).

As former spies who were very good at what they did, Gregorio and Ingrid still hunger for another real mission. When their agency offers them one, they gladly accept it.

Unfortunately, after years of doing the family-thing, they have lost their touch and are captured by the villainous TV show producer Floop (Alan Cumming).

The kids, who seem to have inherited a taste for adventure from their parents, decide to find out what happened to their folks and embark on an adventure that leads them to understand their parents' past.

Their trip is not a smooth one. Along the way, problems, including a bad woman having a bad hair day (Teri Hatcher) and a group of her hit men, are waiting for them.

The children also bring with them all sorts of interesting gadgets they found in a safe house prepared by Gregorio in case of emergency situations after taking a fun but dangerous trip in a super fast boat that dives deep into the sea.

Soon, Juni learns a dark secret behind his favorite TV show, which features many grotesque-looking characters. If he and his sister fail to find their parents soon, they will only see them again as cartoon characters on the show.

The presence of big stars like Antonio Banderas, Teri Hatcher and Alan Cummings somehow does not overshadow the rest of the cast, especially the kids who manage to steal the show at the end of the film.

The best thing about the two young characters is that they look like normal kids.

Carmen is pretty but not the future-supermodel kind of pretty as we see in many other kiddy films, while Juni is chubby, adorable and his genuine clumsiness does not reach the point of helplessness.

Other characters manage to fit perfectly into the simple story: ambitious bad guy Minion (Tony Shalhoub) and his potential financial provider Mr. Lisp (Robert Patrick).

Rodriguez's regular Danny Trejo gets more meat in his character this time, not just as one of the vampires or one of the nameless bad guys. In this film, he plays Antonio Banderas' estranged brother. Strangely, the cruel-faced Trejo manages to be likable here.

Moreover, the film is expected to be silly and does not try to take anything seriously. So there's no point in expecting the characters to sputter a message in the last reel which could have been a distraction.

The film's bad guys are also not terminally stupid, unlike what we usually see in these kinds of movies. When the spy kids outsmart them, we do not have to suspend our disbelief to a point where we need to turn off our brain.

Family films with elements of action usually suffer from a lack of excitement since they try so hard at avoiding violence. Some have action scenes straightforwardly dumb, like Petualangan Sherina (The Adventure of Sherina), or comically violent like Home Alone. Spy Kids has none of those.

There is one thing that Spy Kids has in common with other Rodriguez films: It has non-stop action and a pace which never seems to slow down. So if you finally have the time to take in a movie with your whole family, this one is surely worth the while to watch.