Spy Kids 3: Game Over

Juni Cortez is no longer with the OSS and is now a private detective, taking work where he can get it. However, the President himself requests Juni return to service as his sister is in danger. She has entered, and become trapped in, a deadly video game called Game Over which has been designed by the Toymaker. In it he ensnares children's minds forever. Juni is sent in to rescue her and team up to stop the Toymaker's evil plot. Enlisting his grandfather's help, Juni sets out to win the unwinable level 5.

I usually don't enter a film series in the middle simply because it is often difficult to appreciate the third instalment of anything without having seen what has gone before. However, when it comes to a kids' film, I was pretty sure that I could managed to battle through the labyrinth-like plotting of the Sky Kids series! I started watching this film in 3-D (I had a 2 dvd set) but the glasses were a little uncomfortable and the colours looked funny all the way through. After seeing a few items sort of float vaguely around my television I was quite unimpressed and decided just to go with the 2-D disk. The plot is pretty thin (it's never really clear what the attraction of the game is or what the Toymaker even wants) but it sets up a colourful and enjoyable little ride through a computer game - which is delivered pretty well despite all it's silliness!

The main weapon in the Spy Kids' cannon is it's stars - both actors and director. Rodriguez is a very good director when it comes to style and action and his influence makes this film a lot more fun than others likely would. He is slick but also fully aware that he needs to make it `fun' and not just colourful and noisy. It's all a bit silly of course but the 3-D gimmick is a little bit heavy at times (like the old films in the 50's that had actors punching at the screen) but it isn't that bad. The reason the silliness doesn't really damage the film is because the actors seem to play to it - and a very fine series of performances these are. Pretty much all the cast are good fun and their performances are about as hammy and fun as you can imagine. Sabara is great fun - a cool kid without any of the horrid cutesy stuff that can happen. I found Vega less fun as she was a little too smart for my liking, but she was still fun and the rest of the kids were suitably fun with not a bad performance between them. The adult cast will provide much of the fun for the adults watching - there is a large number of Rodriguez regulars in the cast who all overplay to suit the sense of fun the film has.

Montalban is great fun. Forever Khan in my mind, he has a great voice and screen presence and he heavy makes the message of forgiveness work reasonably well and not just being mawkish like it should be! Stallone hams it up and has good fun even if his multiple personalities don't totally work. Clooney has fun in his small role but the rest of the cast are all cameos some of them are used pretty well and got a giggle but others just show their faces. However, they don't detract from the film and it at least will amuse parents to see people like Martin, Trejo, Cumming, Shalhoub, Buscemi, Paxton, Wood and Hayek. The out takes at the end made me realise how good the performances were - it just never dawned on me that, although I knew it wasn't real, that 95% of this was shot on greenscreen - making acting to anything that little bit harder.

Overall, this is a silly film but it is one that kids will love. The sheer sense of fun that Rodriguez brings to it is infectious and makes for a great 90 minutes with the kids. The star cast made it more enjoyable for me and helped the sense that everyone was just enjoying themselves. It is hardly a great film but it does just what you expect it to do and who can ask anymore than that? On the basis of this I will definitely be watching the first two films when I cross their paths. Sad - but true!

There's little denying that the Spy Kids series wasn't brilliant. Far better kids' films have been made. Though I must admit, I have enjoyed them. They have proved to be extremely flexible with mediocre budgets and are extremely fun to watch. And Spy Kids 3-D brings you into the experience - anything in 3-D is brilliant, but I found this an overwhelming cinematic experience with the 3-D glasses. This may explain why Spy Kids 3-D did well at the box office. Although, saying that, the only really good thing is the cinematic experience. This film does have substance enough to keep you watching through the whole thing, but there's no denying that it lacks on the intelligence and is once again, a predictable affair. And there's no character development either - didn't either of the Spy Kids learn anything from their encounters in the game? There really isn't much to warrant a DVD purchase - though you can still view it in 3D on the TV, a lot of the experience is lost in the translation. Though to be honest, this isn't exactly a gem for your collection, but it isn't exactly a large mound of doggy do either. 6/10

I did like the first two movies, which had a sense of fun, but despite a wonderful idea, Spy Kids 3D fails to live up to the standard of the first two movies.

I will say though that the 3D effects are more than decent, and there are spirited performances from Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara. And I did really like the idea of the story, it was a very original idea, sadly the execution was patchy.

The storyline was sadly very predictable, and despite the impressive images on screen, it failed to have a sense of wonder. Another problem was that the script was very devoid of humour, and while the first two movies were well written and had some funny moments, this instalment had one or two laughs scattered here and there, but overall was a bit limp, and the finale was rather disappointing.

The acting certainly wasn't awful, it was just a little uninspired. The two leads are fine and Ricardo Montalban is surprisingly very good as the grandfather, and while Antonio Banderas, Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub and George Clonney did their best, the uneven script disallowed them to have any sense of fun. The actor I was most disappointed with, sorry guys, was Sylvester Stallone. Now I like Stallone, and I consider Oscar(1991) one of the most unfairly underrated movies ever, and I like a fair majority of his work. But here I felt he was out of character playing the villain. Hamming it up, a phrase I usually despise describes his acting here perfectly, and he overdoes it shamelessly at times.

Overall, Spy Kids 3D isn't terrible, it is just mediocre, and could have been much better. 4/10 for the 3D effects, and the efforts of the cast. Bethany Cox

What a mess. There are clever ideas here and there, a few laughs, the occasional decent special effect (I saw this on TV so didn't see it in 3D, which perhaps would have made the generally disappointing effects more impressive), but the lame, tossed-together script and the lack of any cohesion to the final product make this only barely watchable. This movie seems to just be going through the motions; you can't even call it formulaic because it barely attempts to even stick with any formula, it's more like random stuff thrown in here and there. As for the ending, well, it's main purpose was to create an excuse (and not a very good one) to have cameos by everyone who was in the first two movies (allowing them to list Bandaras first in the credits even though he's on screen for only a couple of minutes), and the final showdown is so utterly moronic that words fail me.

At the same time, I didn't actually hate it. I wasn't in pain watching it. It was a mindless Saturday afternoon movie and I watched it as mindlessly as I could and occasionally enjoyed it. But after the very fun second movie (which I thought superior to the first), this was a great disappointment. I'd advise skipping it.

I enjoyed Spy Kids 1 & 2 but this one was a waste of time. The 3D gimmick was unnecessary and not that effective. I found it very blurry for a lot of the time and took the glasses off.

Daryl Sabara is not improving as he gets older, he gets more irritating. In fact most of the kids were irritating. ( With the exception of Alexa Vega and Courtney Jines). It had some funny lines but not as witty as the first two. The noir style opening would have gone completely over the heads of the main target audience. Sylvester Stallone was good as were the cameo appearances by George Clooney, Elijah Wood, Bill Paxton and Steve Buscemi.

The computer generated sets looked tacky. And the bald wig on one of the Stallone characters looked like a prop from a small town repertory theatre. I was looking forward to this but I was very disappointed. It was made by the bean counters not the creative people.