Having erased most of the goodwill he had previously accumulated as a filmmaker with such missteps as Alita: Battle Angel, We Can Be Heroes and the convulsively stupid Hypnotic—which just might go do as this year’s worst film—it is not entirely surprising to find Robert Rodriguez once again returning to the cover of his most durable franchise with Spy Kids: Armageddon, the fifth installment of the family film series that began with the cheerfully entertaining 2001 original and continued on with increasingly forgettable follow ups in 2002, 2003 and 2011. Although this one is a step up from both Hypnotic and previous entry All the Time in the World (which, you almost certainly do not recall, was presented in the twin miracles of 3-D and scratch-and-sniff), it ultimately proves to be nothing more than a bland rehash that lacks the wit and energy that made the first one so much fun.
While the previous films maintained some kind of connection between them, Armageddon is essentially a reboot with no ostensible links to its predecessors—not even a cameo by Danny Trejo (unless he was particularly well-disguised)—though the setup is pretty much the same as before. Married couple Terrence (Zachary Levi) and Nora (Gina Rodriguez) seem normal enough but as it turns out, they are the world’s greatest secret agents, going off on adventures around the world in the service of OSS. All seems good with them except for the fact that they have yet to inform their young kids—straight-arrow Patty (Everly Carganilla) and the more morally flexible Tony (Connor Esterson)—of their secret lives but before they can, a super-secret computer program devised, sort of, by Terrence that can hack into any system is stolen and used to lock half the population of the world out of their computerized devices.
This turns out to be the doing of Rey “The King” Kingston (Billy Magnussen), a rich and powerful video game developed who plans to use the technology to make the world a better place at all costs. However, he is missing one crucial piece of the puzzle and while he manages to capture mom and dad in hopes of retrieving it, the kids manage to escape to an elaborate safe house where they learn who their parents really are and realize that it is up to them to save both them and the world from The King. Luckily, the safe house is equipped with all the technology, training facilities and snacks they need, so Patty and Tony work together by using their own unique skill sets to (Spoiler Alert) save the day and the world.
Obviously, I recognize that I am not the target audience for this particular film as Rodriguez is aiming squarely at younger viewers, specifically those who are too old for Nickelodeon shows and not quite old enough for the adventures of Indiana Jones or James Bond. Those viewers may find Armageddon to be acceptable, especially if this is their first exposure to the franchise. After all, it is bright, colorful and quickly paced and the action sequences—featuring the deliberately cartoonish gadgets deployed by our heroes—lean more towards silliness than suspense. Hell, even when the bad guy is finally apprehended, the punishment he receives for his attempt at world domination (which was done with the purest of motives, of course) is little more than a time out.
Those viewers who are a little older and/or have seen any of the previous Spy Kids films may feel somewhat differently, however. Like nearly all of Rodriguez’s family films, this one, which he co-wrote with son Racer Max, tends to mistake freneticism for excitement to the point where the whole thing feels like the cinematic equivalent of a kid in the midst of a particularly brutal sugar high whose crash is imminent. Lots of stuff happens, obviously, but none of it sticks in the mind and the blend of silly high-tech heroics and family dynamics that made the first film so winning are largely absent here. (Although not exactly for little kids, the recent Blue Beetle did a much better job of pulling this balance off.) The two young leads are cute and well-scrubbed but are ultimately not particularly memorable while the adults have even less to do, though the presence of Rodriguez, following in the footsteps of previous spy moms Carla Gugino and Jessica Alba, does continue the saga’s commitment to highlight developments in MILF technology, I suppose.
In the end, Spy Kids: Armageddon does little more than rehash the elements that made the franchise work in the first place without ever figuring out a way to give the material anything in the way of a fresh tweak—the whole thing has the wearyingly repetitive feel of a pilot for a television series that has been produced for no reason other than contractual obligation. As I said, little kids—especially ones who have never seen one of these films before—might get a kick out of its goofiness, though I don’t know why parents would elect to start them on that one when the still-perfectly entertaining original is readily available. For everyone else, it will just feel like an exercise in bland pointlessness that shows Rodriguez once again squandering his undeniable talents as a filmmaker on projects that feel more like offhand family projects than anything else. Yes, it is better than Hypnotic—a film so stupid that you almost have to see it to understand just how dumb it is—but it ultimately isn’t that much better and it is ultimately just as forgettable.