giants1563 Reviews

Spy Kids (2001)

Young sleuths in action

[2 April 2001]

"Spy Kids" is one heck of a movie. Never have I seen a kiddie flick come along which is so clean, and yet still so entertaining at the same time. This odd blend of one of the best (The Matrix) and worst (Baby Geniuses) movies of 1999 is surprisingly exciting for something so "PG", and director and writer Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn) manages to create loads of fun while still keeping the violence level down.

He manages to do all this by being incredibly inventive with his special effects. "Spy Kid's" is a visual fun house of ideas which are all so playfully intuned with kids and their level of interest. He comes up with things such as movable thumb people and floors that fall apart like puzzle pieces. Rodriguez also has a lot of fun with this topic, putting in loads of high tech equipment and transportation, which offer kids and adults an incredible ride which is most always played for humor and thrills.

The basic set up for "Spy Kids" is this. Gregorio (Antonio Banderas) and Ingrid (Carla Gugino) were both spies working for different agencies, when a "hit" put out on each other brings them closer together. They decide to put away the spy work and live normal lives as husband and wife, and soon father and mother.

But the perfect family they dream about is far from. Their kids are keeping secrets from them, a trait from their former job that they feel they have passed on to their children. Their daughter Carmen (Alexa Vega) is skipping school, while Juni (Daryl Sabara) is being bullied at school and instead of telling his parents, just makes up a couple of imaginary friends.

They see how their past lives have affected their children, but before they can correct their wrong, their past catches up with them. They are thrown back into the spy game to investigate the capture of several other spies, but only end up being captured themselves.

The culprit also just happens to be Juni's favorite televison star, Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming). Floop is after a brain prototype that Gregorio created years ago. If he can implant that into the heads of his robot and mutant henchmen, nothing can stop him from taking over the world and becoming the number one rated show on TV. But his other human henchmen Minion (played dastardly well by Tony Shalhoub) has other plans. Back home, the feuding siblings must learn to work together in order to save their parents and the world as they are tossed into the spy game as well.

It seems as if the best kids movies always have a family-like theme to them, and "Spy Kids" is no exception. Much of this movie is exciting, but then there are those other parts, which are to cuteness what Charlie's Angels was to sexy clad women. Some may accuse Rodriguez of turning corny on us all of a sudden, but luckily he is also working with some very funny material here, as well as with newcomer Daryl Sabara.

His partner Alexa Vega also comes off very strong in her role as his sister. Together they are a very good crime fighting team, and I look forward to seeing them in upcoming sequels. Alan Cumming is also very good, turning in an absent minded Willy Wonka style performance that also fits in very well with Rodriguez's style for this movie, which seems to be based largely around an amusement park surrounding a James Bond movie.

His film may be corny for older kids, but this is for the young ones and chances are you will never find a movie as decent and fun for them as this one is for a long time. Out of four stars, Spy Kids definitely scores a three.

Exit Wounds (2001)

Shooting blanks

[1 April 2001]

There is really nothing to be said about "Exit Wounds" that hasn't been said in the last few weeks. Steven Seagal is still the king of bad action movies and will have to do more than cut his ponytail off in order to change that. He still has this image of a stiff and boorish bully who always talks as if he were trying to repress an uncontrollable rage.

He is no fun as an action hero, and as a person, there is very little to like about many of his characters. He stars here as a renegade Detroit police detective named Orin Boyd. After he pulls a stunt that saves the Mayor's life from would-be attackers, Boyd receives more negative feed back than good. He is considered to be reckless by his department, and so without telling us why the Mayor was attacked in the first place, the story switches over to Boyd's new headquarters.

He is demoted down to the 15th precinct, a hole in the ground that he doesn't want to be in. He is assigned a new partner (Isaiah Washington) and is told to seek group therapy for his violent and reckless behavior. The rest of the plot centers on a drug scam run by Latrell Walker (DMX), a crime boss who soon becomes Boyd's prime target. But what Boyd doesn't know is that it runs deeper than drugs.

"Exit Wounds" is a messy all over the place. It contains brutal martial arts sequences, gruesome death, formulaic story, and it's biggest problem, just bad acting. It is directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, the guy who made even Jet Li look bad last year in "Romeo Must Die". Here, he is working with the same tools he did last time. The fight scenes are all poorly edited and over stylized with slow motion kicks and punches. He subjects his characters to gruesome deaths (one in particular goes through a windshield while in another scene one is crushed between two cars.), which just come off as mindless violence rather than anything impressive to watch.

The plot is the regular renegade cop routine, including several old cliches that you would find in your regular silly cop thriller. But this thing really loses its way when it gets trigger happy with its plot twists. Characters switch sides throughout this entire movie until it gets to the point where the twists are the movie. You begin to lose track of who is good and bad, and overall, you just don't care. Nothing that writers Ed Horowitz and Richard O'Ovidio come up with is ever shocking and it is easy to just slump back in your chair and roll your eyes everytime another twist is introduced.

Acting, by Bartkowiak's definition, must be to have his actors model for the camera while rap music plays in the background. The script is already spitting out senseless dialogue as it is, but the actors bring no emotion to their roles besides tough demeanors and blank expressions. Seagal is terrible at doing comedy, in fact, he actually looks more threatening when doing so. DMX has that same ability, just with drama. There is an early scene where he visits his jailed brother, a serious scene that is written and acted terribly enough to be laughable.

One highlight of "Exit Wounds" though is Anthony Anderson. This guy is like a fatter Chris Tucker. He always makes even the worst line funny because of his great timing with physical mannerisms. He and Tom Arnold apparently knew this movie was terrible and so they come through with a very funny improv conversation (Arnold plays a talk show host in the movie) that is worth the wait. They take a crack at everything from viagra to masturbation to fat women. It's more entertaining than anything else in this movie, trust me.

Heartbreakers (2001)

***

[7/10 · 30 March 2001]

The con is definitely on in director David Mirkin's (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion) new flick "Heartbreakers", a romantic comedy that offers just about everything to every gender and age. The good part about this film is that it is hilarious, but the best is that it does it the old fashioned way, with barely any toilet humor at all.

"Heartbreakers" earns it's humor by letting the character's make fun of themselves, especially Ray Liotta who comes off extremely well as a rough talking and goofy "goodfella" from Jersey. You can tell that the cast is having a lot of fun in this movie because they basically carry it. The script is very jumpy, cutting from good-natured romances, to funny and mean spirited cons, to a touching mother-daughter relationship. It is hard to exactly see where the point of this story is going sometimes because it is dealing with so much, but still the dialogue is very good and David Mirkin gets his cast to all put in lively and wild performances that make it all seem worth while.

Our two cons are Max (Sigourney Weaver) and Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt), a mother- daughter team who center their sights on two timing males. Ever since Max was abandoned by Page's father, she has been swindling the male sex, both getting her revenge and getting enough money to get by.

The way it works is that Max spends her time romancing a certain man, for instance the movie's opening victim (Ray Liotta), until he is ready to pop the question. Once the marriage has ended, she holds out on the sex, driving the guy crazy. Then the next day he sees Page, who in this plot just happens to be his new secretary in a short skirt. It doesn't take long before Page has him right around her little finger, and it isn't long before Max comes in and catches them. Then words like "divorce" and "cash settlement" are used. This funny opening couple of scenes is only the beginning.

These women have a whole bunch of tricks, using their bodies and their brains to get exactly what they want for the least amount of money. They can get out of anything, and away from everybody, except the IRS. An agent (Anne Bancroft) finally comes forward, saying that the two have never paid their bills, and if they don't, their assets will be frozen, which means the 300 thousand dollars they just stole will be gone.

Max has more problems as well. Page is ready to leave the nest and meet a man of her own, but Max is afraid to let her go because she doesn't want what happened to her to happen to Page. She is able to convince Page into doing one more job with her. The target, a rich old man (Gene Hackman) living in the upper part of Florida.

While on the island, Max manages to get close to the chain smoking millionaire, using her best Russian accent. Page, meanwhile, starts working on a bar owner named Jack (Jason Lee), who if he sells could earn up to 3 million dollars. This being her first job by herself, she wants it to be perfect, but doesn't expect to actually fall in love with him.

If you had to pick a strong and independent actress for your lead heroine, I don't think anyone could rise above the talents of Sigourney Weaver. She is a wonderfully funny combination of devious, sexy, smart, caring, and resourceful. She keeps an "in control" attitude on through the entire course of this film, and I actually cared about her, and her evil manipulation, because she gives her character good reason for everything she does. Here is a great female hero against male jerks and pigs everywhere.

Hewitt isn't far behind with a free spirited, pouty, and sexy performance as her "anxious to start a life of her own" daughter. Hewitt and Weaver are very funny together, especially in a battle of the bodies scene with former SNL cast member Kevin Nealon. Mirkin never lets the relationship between the two get overly sentimental, but yet still makes the mother-daughter conflict interesting. The same can also be said for the slight romance between Hewitt and Jason Lee. In a year full of romantic disappointments, these two make up the first likable couple of the year, even if their time together is fairly short.

And Gene Hackman is absolutely side splitting in this movie, showing a wheezing, sickly looking, rich target who is just infatuated with cigarettes. Watching him defend the tobacco company right before his parrot dies from second hand smoke is exactly the kind of "in denial" style humor he brings to this film. This is Hackman at his funniest, and it is a joy to see him in a role where he can just cut loose and have fun with a character for a change.

"Heartbreakers" is a decent comedy that never comes off as either feministic or sexist. It is all handled with great care by David Mirkin and he and the cast come through with the first really funny film of the year. If your looking for a good date movie, or just a good buddy flick, this one's "heart" is in the right place.