Robert Rodriguez, the auteur who burst onto the scene with El Mariachi and followed it up with Desperado , From Dusk Till Dawn, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, knows how to pack a film full of explosive action. The gore of those films, however, has turned to giggles in Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams. It sometimes seems that Rodriguez begins with over-the-top and goes from there, and in these Bond films for the younger set, it works beautifully.

Spy Kids vs. Spy Kids 2

In the first Spy Kids movie, Carmen and Juni Cortez learned that their parents were retired spies. A new generation joins the fun this time around, as the maternal grandparents come for a visit, bringing with them a subtle whiff of disapproval. There is also a mirroring family: rival spy kids Gerti and Gary Giggles are the offspring of a man who has used underhanded methods to take over the spy agency which employs them all.

The action begins in an amusement park with horrific rides named the Whipper Snapper, the Vomiter, and the Juggler. Then it takes us to an invisible island where Steve Buscemi plays a mad scientist who's only half mad. He does, however, have a menagerie of gruesome genetically engineered monsters to protect his latest invention, that iconic machine that will control the world.

Bright, brash, and noisy, this movie appeals to kids without causing parents to grit their teeth. Crudity and bathroom jokes, those staples of kid movies, are kept to a minimum, but laughs are plentiful. It's also nice to see a movie with a strong ethnic flavor that isn't insisted upon as a plot function.