"Spy Kids "

Robert Rodriguez, the director of such films as "From Dusk Til Dawn", "Desperado" and "El Mariachi" has brought to the screen an amazing family film. And when I write family film I mean for the whole family.

My beautiful wife and I took our five year old son to see "Spy Kids" and all of us completely enjoyed it from beginning to end. This is a James Bond type thriller for kids with enough cool scenes and action for parents. This is a kids movie parents will want to see a second time. Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino play retired spies, they retired because they started a family.

Their kids do not know their Mom and Dad were super agents. As the parents get brought back in on an assignment for the first time in nine years they are a little rusty and get captured by the evil genius trying to take over the world.

Alan Cumming plays a host of a kids television show which doubles for his experiments on making evil super agents. Robert Patrick plays the man who is funding the plan for the new creations. The two kids played by Daryl Sabara and Alexa Vega now have to work together to not only save their parents but also save the world. They get to use all kinds of special agent goodies to help get past any obstacles and reach the villains castle where their parents are being held in the dungeon. Rodriguez uses grown up special effects and music to keep his movie going and uses kid like humor and silliness to continue the pace.

And what would a kids film be without a message, the movie hits on the facts that family is more important than money or disagreements and that keeping secrets from the ones you love is not the way to have a complete and open relationship, whether it is between parent and child, brother and sister or husband and wife.

"Spy Kids" is a wonderful film and the sequel has already been greenlit for production and I can hardly wait. In this day and age where people are always blaming Hollywood on making kids do bad things, I couldn't help but think that maybe my son was too young for this movie. Before the film I asked him what we were going to see and this is what he picked up from the commercial "...Spy Kids, it is where the evil genius gets the Mom and Dad and the kids have to save them before the genius tries to take over the world...". So it is true that kids as young as five pick up a lot from television. After the movie I asked him if me and his Mom were captured by the evil genius would he and his sister save us, and he told me "...no, because the genius is just pretend, it was a movie..." which means that parents out there should stop blaming Hollywood for their kids problems and look at themselves and teach their children the difference between the pretend world of movies, television, and video games and the real world we actually live in.

"Spy Kids" is a movie for everyone and I recommend it for anyone who like good action films.