It’s the kind of obnoxious movie that has even seasoned film critics swearing in the aisles and clamouring for the exit. Add to this some extremely weird character choices – such as a villain called Tick Tock who, mystifyingly, speaks with the helium voice of a chipmunk – and you’ve got the movie equivalent of Swagger Jagger. Spy Kids 4D’s dialogue really is atrociously awful, and acts like a lead weight around the film’s neck. “I’d love to, but I don’t have time.” “Time isn’t on my side.” “There’s no time like the present.” “I’ve got time on my hands.” Hic. After half an hour, your jaundiced liver would explode. If you were to drink a shot of gin after each utterance of the word ‘time’, you’d be drunk within the first ten minutes. Even the normally effusive Jeremy Piven seems bored as Marissa’s boss, Danger D’Amo. But Jessica Alba and Joel McHale turn in notably somnolent performances as their parents (McHale, in particular, is saddled with a cretinously stupid character to inhabit). Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook are perfectly serviceable, albeit in a typical Hollywood child actor kind of way, as the film’s know-all young heroes.
Like the scratch-and-sniff cards, the inclusion of Gervais seems like an afterthought, and his voice-over session sounds as though it was conducted over Skype. To provide a bit of comic relief, Ricky Gervais provides the voice of a cyborg dog, who acts as the bratty kids’ sidekick. The smells are necessarily confined to quieter, incidental moments of the film – when the film’s brother and sister are eating sweets, or when a baby farts, for example – and the final square has been scratched and sniffed within forty-five minutes of the opening credits.Īnyway, back to the film. Robert Rodriguez appears to tire of the gimmick even before the audience does. I asked someone else about this after I left the screening room, and they confirmed that, yes, all eight squares smelled vaguely like different types of air freshener from a Vauxhall Senator, or maybe a fake perfume from a street vendor in Madrid. Then there’s the second, more fundamental problem: all the squares smell almost exactly alike. First, you’re sitting in a pitch-black cinema, so locating the correct number to scratch on the card, and then offering that particular area to your readily flared nostrils, is surprisingly difficult. There are two problems with this aspect of the film. It’s a gimmick pencil-moustached auteur John Waters played about with in Polyester exactly thirty years ago. As you head into the cinema, you’ll be handed a pair of 3D specs – par for the course in a family movie these days – and also an A6 piece of card with the numbers one to eight printed on it.Īt key moments in the film, you’re asked to rub a specific number and give it a sniff – the idea, you’re told, is that the scents released will immerse you further in the mind-boggling action on the screen. To compensate for the Fisher Price plot, Rodriguez has employed a couple of gimmicks to keep audiences occupied.
#Spy kids 4d series#
I can’t take any more.”Įssentially a reboot of the series of the massively successful, kiddie-friendly adventures Robert Rodriguez kicked off a decade ago, Spy Kids 4D is based around a new family, a new crop of high-tech gadgets, and a new supervillain to fight.īecause this is a film called Spy Kids, Marissa’s two bratty step children are soon dragged into the conflict with the villain, and in the process, learn important life lessons, such as the need for cooperation and the strength of the family unit. At any rate, it’s the first screening I’ve been to where more than one journalist has legged it well before the end credits – approximately five minutes before the conclusion, the person sitting next to me took off his glasses and marched for the door, muttering words that sounded something like, “Forget this.
This brings me to Spy Kids: All The Time In The World In 4D, a film apparently designed to amuse children and irritate parents. It sounds like Oh My Darling Clementine remixed by the Devil and, like Who Let The Dogs Out, appears to have been written specifically to relieve children under the age of 10 of their pocket money while driving everyone else to distraction. By now, you may well be aware of the song Swagger Jagger, the debut single from X-Factor runner-up, Cher Lloyd.
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