So I said I loved part 2 because of its ending. Same turns out to be true here. But I was really brainwashed by this installment of the trilogy, I called it one of my favourites of 2003. Turns out it’s really all to do with one young girl, Courtney Jines, now 12 years old and starring in the film adaptation of the cutest book ever, Because of Winn-Dixie. It’s really all about her. She’s the only person involved with this movie who I wouldn’t excuse by saying, “well, it was a brave decision.”

‘Cos this movie was a brave move in this trilogy. It’s a brave movie on the whole, one of the most naive and innocent movies ever, perhaps, and I loved this aspect of it. But it doesn’t really stand up beyond a couple of viewings. Only Courtney Jines survives the movie and gives me cause to keep the movie to hand. I could watch her performance here infinitely. She cracks me up and breaks my heart. I guess it’s a personal thing. Honestly, I have to admit, if it weren’t for her, I’d disown my favourite director Rodriguez on this movie. I hope Sin City is as good as it sounds.

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You lucky lucky people … I found my original review of the movie. The date on the file says 27th August 2003 which sound about right to me:

… I guess I feel inspired. Neat segue to Spy Kids 3-D, Robert Rodriguez’ latest “File”. When I watched the download pirate version last month, I misread that opening credit, I thought it said “A Robert Rodriguez digital Fil*M*” which I thought was funky in itself, he’s always used the most appropriate “film by…” credit on this series, I think a different one every time. Digital Fil*E* is even more appropriate for this one, and if there’s any director alive, indeed in history, who has the right to use such a credit, it’s Robert Rodriguez. I swear to god, I am in love with this guy. I’ve said it before, but I mean it more. I was watching this movie in a fairly surprisingly crowded cinema, considering it’s in it’s 5th week or something, mostly kids, but I swear I was enjoying it more than anyone in the room lol. I haven’t laughed out loud so much at a movie since South Park. It simply rocks my socks off.

There’s so much to mention. The most obvious thing is the 3-D: is it good? The interesting thing that I found was that the last 3-D movie as far as I know was “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” but it only had around 15 minutes of 3-D footage at the end. Pretty much the whole of Spy Kids 3-D is in 3-D – it gives you time to adjust. I found the 3-D stuff became much cooler around half-way. And I’ll also add that because of my eyes (especially at the moment – one of my contacts is off by a bit), I usually have trouble with 3-D. But this, at least in places, was actually pretty damn impressive. The CG stuff works better for obvious reasons, but certain lighting effects improved the live action (Elijah Wood’s scene works perfectly ‘cos of all the bright backlight).

Robert Rodriguez, as always, does everything. He wrote the entire score for this one. For SK2, he had help, here apparently he did it alone, and it’s an incredible score, perfectly matching his imagined world and charting the peaks and troughs of speed and emotion, even in the ridiculous spirit of this movie (when Juni’s girlfriend Demetra ‘dies’ in the game, of course she isn’t really dead, but Rodriguez plays in a whining guitar like it’s the absolute end). The digital photography, also by him, looked great to me, no evidence of it being digital on the big screen, just looked like really clean film to me. But the greatest thing of all that he brings to this movie is imagination. There’s more imagination in this movie than all of Hollywood’s output for the rest of the year.

The visual effects were, to me, amazing. Not necessarily the execution of them, perhaps, but definitely the design of them. The battling robots scene between Juni and Demetra is one of, if not the, best fight scenes I’ve ever seen, I just can’t figure out how that was conceived. Not only that, but it’s a great introduction scene for the character of Demetra – Courtney Jines, who I fallen in love with. There’s no reason why the character could not have been played by an older girl, but it’s clear why Jines was chosen. She brings that ‘old soul’ thing to the character, the same thing that can be seen in Daryl Sabara and Alexa Vega, the original Spy Kids. She might be eleven, but she can pull facial expressions that just absolutely kill. Her hair is cool. The tear at the end might be just digital, and her character may be a deceiving phony, but she won my heart completely. If there’s a Spy Kids 4, and I don’t think there should be, this is clearly the end of a trilogy (“Call Everyone”), it had better have Courtney in, ‘cos Alexa Vega may have nailed Carmen again in this one, but frankly she looked bored.

The ending. This is the part that made me laugh out loud. I guess it begins with Antonio Banderas’ scene, the destruction of the all-important Fifth Brain when he’s called and told his children have an emergency, and off he flies on his rocket boots. Cut to Cheech Marin: “Well hey, I’m their Uncle!” and off he flies too. “Call everyone… everyone’s your family. To family, to family, to family.” And Mike Judge’s line, “Hey wait… who won?” Robert Rodriguez has something here, something really special. It may be cheezy as hell hearing 5 characters share a moral line, but the phrase, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” has never had so much power.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2004 at 2:12 am and is filed under 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.