Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

Hot on the heels of the Spy Kids movies and its own predecessor, “Agent Cody Banks,” comes “Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London,” which quickly goes south and drowns in its own flop sweat. The movie is so lame, it leaves you dumbstruck, so come prepared to strike back.

As directed by Kevin Allen from a script by Don Rhymer, “Destination London” arrives only a year after the original movie hit theaters, so you can imagine the time and the care that went in to its production.

Some will argue that because it’s for kids, it doesn’t matter that its script is the pits, that the acting is third-rate, and that it’s filled with enough ethnic stereotypes to make you question the filmmakers’ own prejudices. But that’s the conventional wisdom behind these sorts of movies: As long as they keep kids in their seats, then they must be entertaining, so that’s good enough.

Well, it isn’t.

In the movie, Frankie Muniz returns as Cody Banks, a junior CIA operative sent to London to thwart the evil Diaz (Keith Allen) from using a mind-control device that will allow him to put the screws to the world by commanding world leaders.

Posing as a clarinetist at a posh music school, Cody, who can’t play the clarinet (nyuck-nyuck), goes about his secretive business with the help of Derek (Anthony Anderson), a bumbling black stereotype whose grinning idiocy is such a grotesque throwback, you’d think he were starring in a minstrel.

Sandwiched between this and the film’s flotilla of flatulent jokes are a handful of subplots, one in which involves Cody’s flirtation with a dull British spy named Emily (Hannah Spearritt), but none of which give the movie the energy it needs.

The first “Cody Banks” was hardly a smash, but it still was rather good. Buoyed by some clever writing, a gung-ho performance by the likable Muniz, and a credible script that kept the action moving, the movie was a B-level complement to Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids series, which remains the high point in the kid-cum-James-Bond genre.

Rodriguez’s insights into childhood, sibling rivalry and his forward-thinking grasp on technology make his movies fresh, inventive and alive. They have style, they don’t condescend, they have a healthy respect for diversity and they’re fun. All of those qualities kids appreciate--and all of them are conspicuously missing from the sloppy piece of ho-hum junk that’s “Destination London.”

Grade: D