For a few late millennials, the Spy Kids franchise has assumed a sort of vaguely remembered, but beloved mantle. I was seven years old when the first film hit theaters or, more accurately for the target demographic, hit a child’s tentpoles of culture – Happy Meal toys, TV advertisements, whatever spy “gear” classmates brought in for show and tell. The movies, particularly the 2001 original, were wacky and grandiose, goofily futurist adventures with cartoonish stakes. If you were a kid, Spy Kids (along with the 2002 sequel and 2003 3D edition) were an ultimate fantasy, with sick gadgets and cool parents (international super spies played by Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino).
Spy Kids: Armageddon, Netflix’s reboot of the franchise with the original writer-director Robert Rodriguez, understands the wells of nostalgia it’s tapping, though it doesn’t always reach it. To be fair, it doesn’t really have to; like the original, the 94-minute film is aimed squarely at children. As the ultimate responsibilities (and heroics) fell to Carmen and Juni Cortez (Alexa PenaVega and Daryl Sabara), so too, do world-threatening circumstances demand Tony (Connor Esterson) and Patty Tango-Torrez (Everly Carganilla) step up. The adults, particularly the hapless operators of the spy group OSS, are extraneous.
