Spy Kids 3

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 saw this movie and I loved it! Granted, it's not the best in the series (hands down to 1 and 2, I'm not sure which is better)and the story focuses mainly around Juni (my least favorite character). The plot for this movie is the toymaker has a new game called Game Over (hence the title), and the main puropes is for him to take over children's minds. He kidnaps Carmen, and it's basically up to Juni to save her. Arnold and his friends so could have been left out, or, portrayed by people that can act. The story starts out strong, the action is always there, and other than the fact that the movie is focused on Juni and him alone, that's probably the only glich that this movie has. Don't let the 3-d thing get to you, it's not that hard. However, if one is going to see it, they had better come with an open mind about movie making and special effects.

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.

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