Hey folks, Harry here... You could not drag me to this thing. I don't know this Pyul fella, he claims to be here in Austin, but I'll be damned if I have clue one what Tool, I mean Pyul's tastes are. But dudes, dudettes... he just wrote a positive review of AGENT CODY BANKS... REALLY! Hey Zeus Morales!!! Beware of potential stupidity below...
Hey Harry,
Went to the Agent Cody Banks screening this morning and since I didn't see a single one of your infamous entourage there, let alone yourself, I figured you guys probably wrote this one off. As has most everybody, judging by the cracks in several reviews released this week on your site that have absolutely nothing to do with the film. It looks like it's the craptastic whipping boy of the month around these parts, and yet there hasn't been a single review on AICN about it. Until now (if you post this).
I can understand, really I can, just why everybody would write this off. First of all, it's an MGM film, where good films aren't just amazing, they're fucking miracles. And secondly, that trailer sucks the hair off my nuts faster than Christina Aguilera can say "You're a producer? Well then in that case let me get my kneepads." But the tickets were free and I figured what the hell, I've written two reviews for you so far, both positive and both about spy films, so why not take the chance to write a negative one? Right.
Damn. Third good spy film in a row. You gotta hate that right? Yes, let me be the first to say it. Agent Cody Banks is good, great even. How can this Happen? How could the controls be slipping at MGM. Are the producers asleep? How could the studio that made Rollarball what it was, put out A Guy Thing and fucked up the Bond films for so many years actually be on somewhat of a winning streak. I mean, they got Bond right again, they put out Nicholas Nickleby (which sadly no one saw), Dark Blue and now Agent Cody Banks. Well, they had to fuck something up, right. This time, they completely mismarketed a good film. I guess someone woke up and realized things were going too well. Either that or MGM needs to fire their entire marketing department and hire someone who can put asses in seats, because this trailer? This trailers shit. Dark Blue is underperforming as well. And Nicholas Nickleby didn't make a nickle. And they're some of the most entertaining films released since January.
Agent Cody Banks is a kid film, but somehow MGM got a hold of Warner Brother's patented formula in which kids films actually entertain adults as much, if not more, than the kids. There's been a lot of talk that this is simply a Spy Kids ripoff, and while I have no doubts that's what either inspired this movie or got it greenlit, this movie never rips off what Rodriguez was doing with Spy Kids. Rodriguez's formula is one of over the top fantasy that has it's own look and feel, feeling more like a Rodriguez movie for kids than a James Bond movie for kids. This? This is a James Bond movie for kids, using Ian Flemming's rules of Bond to the letter. To the letter. We have a truly Bond villain, bent on world distruction; his evil, menacing henchman; a kidnapped scientist; his beautiful Bond girl daughter; a hilareous exchange with Q; even a hollowed out fortress in the mountains. The pacing is all Bond, never boring you for a second, and the action, while over the top, is all Bond as well. This movie reeks of Bond, and knows it, making a few Bond fan injokes subtly placed in the background for the observant. And the double entendra's, dear god, the double entendra's. They're so Bond it's almost criminal in a PG film. Lines like "She's already your girlfriend, I don't think Gummi Bears are gonna seal the deal." and "Nice outfit. No room for a gun in there." The guy in front of me was laughing so hard, but his daughter just didn't get the joke. "Daddy, whats so funny?" she kept asking him. Just hearing him try and make up excuses for what he was laughing at was part of the fun of the film.
And guys, what the trailer isn't showing you, and sure as hell should be showing you, is the cast of this film. MGM is trying so hard to lure in the kids with Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz and Disney's new poster girl Hilary Duff, that they forgot to try to get the adults to come into the film with their kids rather than drop them off and suffer through Tears of the Sun. This cast is a geek extravaganza. While not quite achieving the level of geek cool that Rodriguez has with his cast of regulars, this manages to bring a great assortment of favorites to the fold that provides nothing but sheer joy to a geek like me.
Watch that trailer again, when you see CIA guys walking up the steps and discussing "We spent $10 million training this kid and we didn't teach him how to talk to girls?" pause it. Look close. Listen to that voice. That's the CIA director. Kieth David. Yes, That Kieth David. And he just has nothing but a good time playing the top dog in this movie. Watch some more and check out the breasts in the Emma Peel outfits. Yeah, that's Angie Harmon, looking hot as ever and providing plety of chances to be the object of innuendo. But wait, where's the villains? Faceless thugs everywhere. Oh wait, I see one. Nope they don't show us his face. The trailer ignores one of the biggest chances to sell this movie to adults. The villains. First of all, there's Brinkman, played as a smotth, cool, perfect Bond Villain that never loses his calm by Ian Mcshane (Sexy Beast) and backed up by one of the most menacing, cool looking thugs in recent memory by none other than Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns). If there's one thing Vosloo does well, it's exude an aura of indestructible menace. And here, he just looks bad ass. From his exclamation point-mohawk haircut to his milky dead eye to the scar running under his chin, his character was drawn straight out of the Bond henchman handbook. What this trailer needed was more Vosloo, much more Vosloo. And just to top things off, what you don't see is Q. The Q character here is played by SNL veteran funny as all hell impersonator Darrell Hammond, who seems to be having the time of his life doing this gig. It's clear the director just stepped back and said "Darrell, just do what you do." and he lets it rip. Some of the best lines of the movie are delivered in his classic deadpan style.
This movies strength lies not just in the fact that it plays as if it were a Bond film, but rather on the fact that this movie never forgets for a moment that it's supposed to be as funny as it is cool. And they let everyone get their moment in the sun without ever overdoing it. The trailer makes Cody look like an indestructible superhero. He's not. Little Frankie gets his ass kicked. Despite his training he has a fatal flaw, not just that he's afraid of girls, but that he is just a kid. Despite all his training, despite all the cool things he does, we are never led to believe he's anything but. And you really want to root for him.
Kids are gonna enjoy this movie. It's got all sorts of action and doesn't ever play down to them. My one complaint about the Spy Kids movies (which I love by the way) is that Rodriguez always has at least a couple potty or nose picking jokes. It always takes me out of the film and reminds me that ultimately he's playing for the kids. Agent Cody Banks allows the kids to come up to the level of the movie, not vice versa. In a sense, it's almost an adult film made so kids can watch it as well. It's one of those movies that kids will watch now and love, and ten, twenty years from now, when they hit their nostalgic age and start watching the movies they loved as kids all over again, they will find the movie different from when they watched it. And they'll giggle to themselves, embarressed that they finally know what their parents where laughing about.
This movies one glaring flaw is that a few effects at the end look WAY too fakey...you can see what I'm talking about with the explosion at the end. But hell, by that point in the movie I was having so much fun, I didn't care. Odds are you'll forgive it too. This, honestly, is some of the most fun I've had at a theatre so far this year. Take your kids. No suffering through a film just to entertain them this time. Drop some cash on this one, and convince MGM to keep up their family film trend that they started with Nicolas Nickleby and continued with this. Really, honestly, truly a film the whole family can enjoy.
Pyul Mactackle
