Release Date: March 14, 2003
Starring: Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon, Keith David, Arnold Vosloo, Ian McShane
Directed by: Harald Zwart
Written by: Zack Stentz, Ashley Miller, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
MPAA Rating: PG (action violence, mild language, some sensual content)
If it wasn’t for the James Bond franchise and a few of those Hannibal Lecter movies, MGM very likely would have gone under by now. In 2002, they vowed to stick to smaller, safer productions like Barbershop and Legally Blonde to help heal the wounds caused by a large string of flops (including Windtalkers and Rollerball). The studio thus presents Agent Cody Banks as their answer to the Spy Kids craze and as a desperate attempt to milk every possible dollar from their 007 property. But the only thing it does successfully is to remove all doubt that the secret agent genre should be reserved for those who've reached puberty.
Frankie Muniz plays Cody Banks, a 15-year-old genius who has apparently received training from a super-top-secret branch of the CIA. Don’t ask why the government would train young teenagers to master mortal combat, stunt driving, and high-tech gadgetry to battle super villains. The reason behind this whole setup is never given, nor even hinted at, so you may as well do what director Harald Zwart and his team ofscreenwriters want you to do: don’t even bother thinking about it.
Instead, focus on the charm and adventure of the story, or lack thereof. The world is about to be in deep trouble if a certain madman (Ian McShane) and his henchman (Arnold Voslo) aquire a certain scientist’s latest creation -- a frozen substance that, when it melts, is programmed to eat away at anything it touches, thus producing a threat to national security. Rather than sending the country’s best adult agent to do the job, the CIA calls on Cody Banks to become close to the scientist’s 15-year-old daughter (Hilary Duff) and secretly retrieve the dangeous material himself.
But the movie is directed towards kids, you say? Prepubescent youngsters who spend their empty afternoons watching it may be entranced for the duration of the film's excessive 105-minute running time, but it’s more than likely that they’ll forget everything about Cody Banks ten minutes afterward. That is, if their parents even allow them to watch the whole thing before they deem it inappopriate for anyone under the age of 13.
Trying to pass itself off as a young James Bond story, there’s everything from slick spy gear to crass innuendo, and the latter is what parents should worry about. There are several instances of this, but one scene sums it up perfectly -- a sexy female agent (Angie Harmon) wearing a tight leather suit and baring plenty of cleavage lets herself into the boys’ locker room to recruit Cody. As you would expect, she is subject to several advances from a handful of half-naked boys. It’s a scene that might work in a Steven Seagal flick or maybe even a James Bond film, where everyone in the situation is an adult, but in Cody Banks it's absolutely indecent.
This is certainly no way to make a family adventure film, especially for those expecting a new version of Spy Kids. And anyone looking for ultra-cool spy trinkets and memorable villains are facing a big disappointment as well. Cody has a stylish BMW skateboard (among one or two other toys) that he uses maybe once, and the over-the-top super-villain and his physically disfigured henchman (a requisite for most evil sidekicks) are both ineffective and embarrassing in their roles. One 007 tribute almost works, though -- the part of the amusing gadgets expert (played by the funny Darrell Hammond).
But Pierce Brosnan himself couldn’t have saved Agent Cody Banks, even with a team of the best from Her Majesty’s Secret Service behind him. In fact, the only viewers who won’t be ashamed of seeing it are too immature for its suggestiveness, and thus the film is a failure all the way around.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)