Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Robert Rodriguez seems to do a kid film for every adult one these days. The 4th film in his Spy Kids franchise isn't really as good as the others from my memory but it has its moments.

The best part about the film was the opening sequence with Jessica Alba chasing after the bad guy whilst 9 months pregnant. Some hilarious stuff there. Being a Jeremy Piven fan, I picked him right away despite the disguises and voice alteration, which blew the ending a little but as it didn't make any sense anyway there wasn't much to loose. Joel McHale isn't given much to do but Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara show up again and there's even a very very brief Danny Trejo cameo hidden in there. Ricky Gervais is the dog. Hah.

There's also a lot of fun nods to the older films and all the devices kept in storage from the previous films.

I've said before how I'm very particular about my time travel rules but I have no idea what's going on in this films universe. Thematically it's great, the message to do everything you can with the time you have and not to waste any moments is fine, but the logic of revelations at the climax of the film is a little strange. No kid would ever know though, so I guess it doesn't matter.

The 3D It's the first film I know of that I've seen shot on the Arri Alexa. The images were fine but the post-converted 3D was really dodgy. I expected much more from Rodriguez, the 3rd film had section of 3D but this was screened at a time before 3D hit big and most cinemas didn't have polarised projection systems so it had to be anaglyph, with red and blue tinted glasses, which also meant it couldn't last the whole film and did strain the eyes somewhat. It's unfortunate because he shot it to be projected polarised and the 3D worlds in that film worked really well. I just would have thought he'd go for shooting this film in 3D too.

This is also the first smell-o-vision (or Aromascope as the film calls it) film I've seen. Like the 3D the smells were completely arbitrary and didn't do much to enhance the film. They had Bacon, Blue Cheese, 3 candy flavours and 2 farts and some boogers or at least they were supposed to, the smells don't exactly match up very well or even work that great. The best thing about them was having Ricky Gervais explain how to use the scratch and sniff card at the star of the film.

What it will be good for is keeping fidgety kids doing something for the brief running time. I'm just glad I got it out of the way before the school holidays start.