New Spy Kids Will Keep Your Family Engaged

Action, gadgets, potty humor and two determined 10-year-olds – What could be better for a family movie together?

Well…

I’m not sure if it’s quite all that but the just-released “Spy Kids All the Time in the World” – the fourth installment in the Spy Kids movie series – is definitely some fun and full of action and adventure.

This weekend, the whole gang went to this movie and they loved it. We did see the “4D” version – which I believe means 3D with an “Aroma-Scope” card included. This means, periodically throughout the movie, a number flashes for you to scratch and sniff from your card of 8 scents.

I personally couldn’t smell much more that some sort of vaguely sweet scent. The kids, however, smelled them all: the farts, the baby poop and the candy smells. They thought it was awesome.

Besides the obvious adventure of kid spies, the storyline takes on a couple of subjects that aren’t often portrayed – blended families and hearing impairment. The daughter, Rebecca Wilson, portrayed by Rowan Blanchard, is bitter about her mother’s death and nothing is going to make her like her new stepmom, Marissa Cortez Wilson (Jessica Alba), until she finds out her boring stepmom is a retired spy.

Her little brother, Cecil (Mason Cook) is hearing-impaired (when’s the last time you saw that in a movie?). Of course, his bright blue hearing aids are written in as gadgets eventually. This condition doesn’t stop him at all.

Their dad, Wilbur (Joel McHale whom you may recognize from “The Soup” and “Community”) is an investigative reporter who is supposed to hunt spies but has yet to find one (even though he lives with one). And of course, there’s a baby who provides comic relief with her prodigious gas and diaper-making ability.

One of the highlights of this fun film is the robotic dog, Argonaut, voiced by Ricky Gervais. His unwillingness to eat real food is the first clue at the beginning of the movie that something interesting is going to happen. His hilarious cockney accent, ninja moves and underbite make him super charming.

Jeremy Piven plays the villainous Time Keeper pretty well, although I have a hard time seeing him as anyone beyond John Cusak’s sidekick because I didn’t watch “Entourage.” The final surprise is when the original spy kids Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) and Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega) reunite to help fight Time Keeper’s stealing all the time in the world! Shitake mushrooms, folks!

The families heal their issues (no spoiler there) in the end and come together.  Try it – you’ll like it. This movie will fuel imagination and entertain you parents for 100 short minutes.

Marijo Tinlin is the editor in chief of Family First, one of the oldest family-oriented websites on the internet. She is also the author of the new book “How to Raise an American Patriot, Making it Okay for Our Kids to Be Proud to Be American” available at www.raisinganamericanpatriot.com.