Rated PG - Running Time: 1:42 - Released 3/14/03
AGENT CODY BANKS
Rated PG - Running Time: 1:42 - Released 3/14/03
Agent Cody Banks is the latest fluffy and thoroughly
inconsequential star vehicle for up-and-coming teenage actor Frankie
Muniz, whose part in the phenomenally intelligent TV sitcom Malcolm
In The Middle has launched him into the stratosphere of adolescent
idolism and afforded him the opportunity to enhance good movies
like My Dog Skip and at least
partially redeem stupid ones like Big
Fat Liar. Muniz’s success at playing a clever, genial,
self-effacing everykid (the only part he’s ever asked to
play) is not so much attributable to any amazing acting technique
as to his ability to always look interested in what he’s
doing, no matter how questionable the material. Perhaps someday
he’ll receive a truly challenging part in a real movie, but
for now he’s back doing what he does best, delivering affable
smiles and good-natured dialogue as an intelligent teenager surrounded
by moronic adults. Helmed by Norwegian director Harald Zwart (One
Night At McCool’s), Agent Cody Banks is an innocuous
teen James Bond movie along the lines of Spy
Kids, but not nearly as inventive or inspired. It presents
passable entertainment for most anyone under 12—but that’s
about it.
The script for this movie is credited to a pair of two-person
writing teams: Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz (their feature film
debut after collaborating on several episodes of TV’s Andromeda)
and Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, whose previous projects
have included such diverse films as Ed Wood, Screwed,
Man On The Moon, and Problem
Child. In their story, Cody Banks (Muniz) is a regular kid
from Seattle who is forced to conceal from his rather dim-witted
parents (Daniel Roebuck, Cynthia Stevenson) and kid brother (Connor
Widdows) that he is actually an agent working for the CIA. After
a fun action scene where he saves a baby who’s trapped in
a runaway car, Cody gets his assignment. It seems that an evil
mastermind named Brinkman (Ian McShane) has acquired a new form
of technology called nanobots, which are tiny robots designed
by good-natured inventor Dr. Connors (Martin Donovan) to devour
certain materials, like oil spilled in the ocean, while leaving
other things intact. Of course, Connors intends them only for
good purposes, but being a well-trained evil mastermind, Brinkman
wants to use them to take over the world. In order for the CIA
to stop him, Cody must become friends with Dr. Connors’s
teenage daughter Natalie (Hilary Duff), an extremely popular hottie
who doesn’t know he exists. The trouble is, while Cody is
cool, intelligent, and fully capable of operating all of his Bond-style
gadgets, he has a little problem concerning girls—he can’t
talk to them without stuttering.
This movie is just another example of the disposable kids’ fare you see popping up at about this time every year. I mentioned Spy Kids, but this one really reminds me more of Clockstoppers, which was released last March. Though it has a few action-packed sequences featuring Muniz (or his stunt double) zooming around on jet-powered snowboards and one-man flying machines, it’s not big enough to contend as a summer blockbuster, so it’s relegated to a spring release when it will have the least competition and therefore the best chance of breaking even. Wow, what an admirable ambition. Muniz’s charm is certainly among the film’s strong points, but neither he nor grown-up hottie Angie Harmon (Law And Order), who plays his CIA “handler,” can overcome the script’s inadequacies enough to make it interesting to anyone old enough to have secondary sex characteristics. **½
