Spy Kids is the first movie that I've ever seen that takes place in Mexico for no reason.

I mean, not to say that I thought it shouldn't have taken place in Mexico, I'm just saying it treated Mexico like it was just another place in which things happen that don't involve drug trafficking, Corona brewing, or napping while wearing sombreros and ponchos. It's just a movie that takes place in Mexico. How about that?

And why shouldn't it? Spy Kids was written and directed by Robert Rodriguez, a guy who grew up in Texas, which as far as I can tell is just Mexico with a bunch of rich white assholes in big white cowboy hats and mustaches shooting pistols out of their Cadillacs with steer horns mounted on the front.

Perhaps this would be a good time to mention that I've been doing Dimetapp shooters all afternoon. I'm afraid my stream of consciousness is gonna have white water today.

Anyway, if you're keeping score at home, Rodriguez was also one of the masterminds behind From Dusk Till Dawn, one of our top ten films of all time. When we found out that he had made a children's movie, we couldn't wait to see how his hard-edged style translated into an even younger demographic than The Faculty. We pictured it a little something like this...

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're not, say, on crack), Spy Kids didn't work out like that at all. It wasn't a wolf in sheep's clothing. Salma Hayek didn't get naked. Heck, she didn't even appear. It did star Danny Trejo though, which is good, because I've always wanted to see him in a Rodriguez film where he didn't get to kill anybody.

Just because a guy has bad skin and a set of evil, evil black eyes, he always has to be the bad guy. But I digress.

Spy Kids is the story of super spies Jean-Claude Van Damme and the chick from the Bon Jovi video, and how they fall in love and give up espionage work in favor of settling down and raising a family.

Wait, no, it wasn't Van Damme. It was the other one. What's his name. Pantaloones... Bandoleeres... Banderas! Antonio Banderas. Eh, big whoop. Like there's a difference.

As it would be expected, young Carmen and Juni, the two children the world's sexiest secret agents this side of Pierce Brosnan, are complete social rejects with warts and no friends. It's weird, because besides having cool parents, these kids also live in a sprawling castle by the side of the raging Mexican sea (Mexico! Can you believe it?).

Maybe the rules are different in Mexico, but I know here in the good old US of A, it doesn't matter if you have an extra buttcheek and oozing pores the size of ashtrays, if you live in a house big enough to do the The Shining big wheel thing in, you get to be the prom queen.

Unbeknownst to the bickering loser kids, Mom Spy and Dad Spy still have Spy Tech (and they still know!), and they've been assigned to infiltrate the secret lair of Alan Cumming and retrieve the stolen secret agents that he's turned into freakish Teletubbies.

Wait a sec... didn't I just... Alan Cumming is in Josie and the Pussycats too! I just saw that, like, two days ago! Man, doesn't this guy ever sleep? Well, I was going to wait until Oscar time to do this, but the Oscars were like, a month ago. Plus I just thought of it.

I am proud to announce that misreviews' Lifetime Achievement Award 2001 goes to... Alan Cumming! What a surprise! What an honor! Roll the highlights reel.

Making an awfully bad show of being two of the world's leading secret agents, Mom Spy and Dad Spy are almost instantaneously captured by Alan Cumming's Fegan Floop, the children's show star who has this whole evil army thing going on on the side.

They are held prisoner in Floop's fanciful lair, which looks like... okay, imagine the factory from Toys combined with... okay, basically just imagine the factory from Toys.

In Mexico.

After babysitter Cheech Marin (Pizza pizza pizza!) spills the beans about their parents' real occupation and is promptly destroyed by ninjas, the bickering loser kids are on their way to discovering that by getting along and cooperating, they don't have to be losers, but can in fact be WINNERS!

Yeah, anyway, there's a lot of cool spy stuff, and personally I'm always a sucker for any variety of candy that can incapacitate a robot made of thumbs. No, that really happens, it's not the drugs this time.

Spy Kids is good solid fun. If you've got kids, take 'em to see this. If I was eight years old, it would have totally rocked my face off.