Does “Spy Kids” have any appeal to adults in 2026?
It is a time-honored tradition to return to your childhood classics and pay them respect with nostalgia-blinded adoration, regardless of their actual quality (just check the Letterboxd page for “Hocus Pocus”). I was one of the many children who grew up on Robert Rodriguez’s series of zany kids' films, enough to even check out the 2020 “Sharkboy and Lavagirl” sequel “We Can Be Heroes.” I didn’t rewatch “Spy Kids” because my soul hungered for great cinema, nor will anyone else. With that said, time is a precious commodity, especially for a college student. Is “Spy Kids” worth the 90 minutes? Or should it stay relegated to the memories of childhood?
To my surprise, “Spy Kids” holds up–even 25 years after its release, and yes, even for college students.
The basic story should be burned into every Gen Zer’s memory, but for the sake of context I will summarize. “Spy Kids” follows Juni and Carmen, elementary school kids whose too-relaxed mother and father are, unbeknownst to them, retired spies. Their parents are soon forced out of retirement to rescue fellow agents who have been kidnapped and transformed into deformed creatures for the kid’s show “Floop’s Fooglies.” Juni and Carmen soon get roped in and get an excuse to ditch school to become spies themselves. The Cortez kids unravel a sinister plot involving cybernetic kids and global domination and just might have to save the world.
If we are being honest, nobody, adult nor child, watches “Spy Kids” to challenge themselves. No spoiler alert is needed when I say that the good guys win. This type of film lives or dies in its details and the particularities of how exactly it all shakes out. Thankfully, Rodriguez does not use the fact that his movie is aimed at children to skimp on creativity or effort.
So many weird plot points and interesting visuals populate the fringes of “Spy Kids”—in particular, the whole setup around “Floop’s Fooglies” is wonderfully strange and gives the movie a bit of an edge. The Fooglies themselves, with their smiles stretched into a wide bearing of teeth, skin the color of rot, call to mind the likely results of throwing fast food mascots into a vat of radioactive chemical waste. The transformed agents seem to speak in complete gibberish, but play their words backwards and they plead for their lives. In another timeline, the setup would make for a great horror movie.
The ingenuity extends to the filmmaking, too. The mid-tier budget is stretched to incorporate some wacky action set-pieces involving jetpacks and motorboats, not to mention weird and elaborate production design. “Floop’s Fooglies” is not filmed in a mere production studio, oh no: just like a real kid would dream, the winding, utterly impractical castle that serves as a filming location is just as out-there as the show itself.
Even the cast is totally game. Alan Cumming as Floop, ringleader of the freak show, gives a performance halfway between Wilder’s Wonka and Depp’s Wonka. He’s insane, but childlike and strangely earnest, and altogether fascinating to watch. Antonio Banderas is perfectly cast as a secret agent father, and both him and Carla Gugino as Ingrid Cortez bring just the right mix of glamour and laughs.
However, at the core of what makes “Spy Kids” work is that it understands kids not just as an audience, but as people. Juni and Carmen ring remarkably true as precocious soon-to-be agents whilst staying charismatic and fun to watch, a testament to the skill of both Rodriguez and actors Daryl Sabara and Alex PenaVega. Carmen’s babysitting of her younger, perpetually whiny brother rang as all-too familiar to this older sibling. Then again, if my brother was writing this, he would likely point out Carmen’s know-it-all attitude and constant patronizing of Juni. By the time the film brings it all home with a message about the importance of family, it has earned it.
The amount of juvenile humour deployed is sparing, and at times even funny to an adult audience. The movie takes pains to establish Juni as the baby of the family and Carmen as overly responsible, only for a line about a particularly embarrassing secret to completely turn that on its head. Jokes that should read as lazy elicited a chuckle: seeing the robot children of doom, Carmen backs off with an “oh shii…take mushrooms.” The “character in kids’ film narrowly avoids cuss word” is tired beyond belief and thuddingly obvious, and yet “Spy Kids” pulls it off with nothing but strong comedic timing.
Spy Kids’ manic energy and superficial themes aren’t going to inspire anyone over the age of 14. But it does not need to. This is solid, engaging entertainment, with fun action, charm, and some memorably bizarre visuals. Coax your younger cousin off the iPad for this one, or even sneak a guilty pleasure watch for yourself.
