Ask 9-year-old me what my favorite movie was, and I’d immediately answer: “Spy Kids.”
The fifth installment of my favorite childhood franchise released on Netflix on Sept. 22, and I wish I hadn’t blemished my former respect for the series by straining my eyes to its chaotic plot and acting.
The first four movies — “Spy Kids,” “Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams,” “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” and “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World” — were iconic and original, not venturing into each other’s plotlines.
Yes, “Spy Kids: Armageddon” is centered around the classic plot of two siblings, Patty and Tony, with spy parents who get kidnapped by an evil villain trying to take over the world. But the plot is embarrassingly predictable and familiar.
The kids discover their parent’s secret spy status — shocker — and have to become spies themselves in an attempt to save their parents and the world. Spoiler alert: they’re always successful.
In the newest movie, the parents Nora Tango Torrez and Terrence Torrez are played by actors Gina Rodriguez and Zachary Levi. Previously seeing Gina Rodriguez in well-known shows like “Jane the Virgin,” added to my overall enjoyment of the movie, making it slightly more bearable when I first saw the familiar actress I adore.
While these spy kids weren’t saving the world from an invasion of a “spy kid army” or stopping the “Timemaster” from speeding up time, the villain Mr. King, steals the Armageddon code — a code that can hack into any device on the planet. I could barely keep all the villains straight as the plot jumped between the Torrez home, secret headquarters and the video game virtual world.
While at times I was confused and overwhelmed by the overall flow of the movie and the many different aspects, such as the video game, the kidnapping of the parents and their adventure into the actual game, the video game based storyline reminded me of “Spy Kids 3D: Game Over,” which also had its fair share of video game villains.
Still, moments in the movie that paralleled my favorite classic scenes in the original “Spy Kids” films were nostalgic to watch.
One parallel scene I appreciated took place at the Safehouse: the secret house the kids have to go to in order to hide from evil characters in the video game. The main characters had the line, “We never use our full names, they are too long” — a tasteful nod to when Carmen Cortez said the same line in the first film.
While the movies have other similarities like the “How to be a Good Spy” book that Tony and Junie Cortez read in both movies, or the small robotic crab “Bronson” similar to “Ralph” the robot spy bug that helped Junie, “Spy Kids: Armageddon” really just made me reminisce on the early 2000s series I missed.
And of course, one of the final scenes had to be the classic — and possibly too overdone — family spy battle against the evil villains of the movie. However I enjoyed the well-scripted battle scene because by the end of the scene and movie, it got the message across: kindness, honesty and being good always win in the end. If there was one scene I felt satisfied by it was the final battle — ending the movie on a positive note, not a chaotic one.
While the video game filled-movie’s plot began to slow down, it almost felt like I was in the movie myself, I was tired and overwhelmed trying to keep up with the busy and detail-filled plot. While I love a good spy movie based on saving the world, this new release made me want to stick with my comforting and original “Spy Kids” movies.
