Rating: 2/10
Review date: September 5, 2003
Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) quit the OSS and is now working as a private eye. He was recalled to save his sister, Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega), who is trapped inside a virtual reality game world. Carmen was trying to shut down the video game called Game Over which is created by the Toymaker. The Toymaker plans to suck the minds of children into the video game, thus trapping them inside forever. Juni only has 12 hours to save Carmen and foils the Toymaker’s plan before the game goes online…
I honestly don’t know how the Spy Kids franchise which started well turn into such a shameful third adventure. The biggest problem is the 3D glasses. Instead of providing transparent ones, the audience is given the older model with the red and blue lenses which caused me to have a headache.
Not only that, the bulk of the movie focuses on Juni Cortez while the rest of the families to reduced to cameo roles (only appearing for a short while near the end of the movie). Carmen is an exception although it was not until after one hour did she finally appears. The main attraction of the previous two movies is the interaction between Juni and Carmen which is supported by the appearance of the family members with a slew of gadgets to help our lead characters along the way. All of those are absent in Spy Kids 3.
The acting is also horrible with boring and stupid dialogue that is performed with such rigidity that is really beyond belief. This movie also serves as another proof that Sylvester Stallone’s career is not doing any good. He looks downright ridiculous as the Toymaker while the cheesy dialogue and deliverance doesn’t help to improve his image at all.
There are many cameo appearances such as Elijah Wood, George Clooney and Salma Hayek. By the way, Floops (Alan Cummings) appears again for the third time while Romero (Steve Buscemi) also shows up in a very short scene.
Spy Kids is a good movie even though the sequel (Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams) doesn’t live up to its predecessor. But I never expect it to end with Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over which is hurt by its lame-ass plot, bad directing, boring dialogue and headache inducing 3D effects. Listen to my advice; don’t waste your money and time to watch this rubbish. I would only recommend this movie for kids (I think they will still be able to find something out of this movie) but I strongly discourage anyone else from watching this movie unless you’re a diehard fan of the franchise. It’s truly amazing how Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids movie can actually degenerate into this worthless piece of junk.
Memorable quote: “Game over!”
-Sylvester Stallone as the Toymaker-
(c) Martin Taidy 2003