Genre: action, adventure, comedy, crime, family

Catch That Kid

Directed by Bart Freundlich

Written by Michael Brandt

and Derek Haas

Starring Kristen Stewart,

Corbin Bleu, Max Theiriot

Classification: G

Rating: **

Sorry, but beyond the manicured geometry of the baseball diamond, batting one for three just doesn't cut it. In Catch That Kid, the children are engaging yet the script and direction are not, which leaves the thing to get all bogged down in its own derivative mechanics. Doubly derivative, because the picture isn't just swiped from the Danish original but also owes more than a passing nod to the initial Spy Kids. There, the young cast playfully riffed off the derring-do of the Bond flicks and, thanks to Robert Rodriguez's directorial touch, that movie was a nice commercial mix of tall-tale fun and bright whimsy. This is neither.

Now it's the heist film that comes in for the kiddie treatment, as a trio of prepubescents sets out to pull a bank job. Not that the tykes are larcenous by nature or nurture. Quite the opposite. Maddy the rock-climbing tomboy (Kristen Stewart), Austin the wide-eyed computer whiz (Corbin Bleu), Gus the tousle-haired go-cart driver (Max Theiriot) -- oh, they're a wholesome threesome, a colour-blind collection so all-American you could prop them up on the stage of a Republican convention.

Speaking of the politics of neglect, how about this plot. Maddy's daddy is sick. Very sick. But the operation to cure him costs a cold $250,000, and Mom's having no luck squeezing the bucks from that hard-hearted banker, so what's a girl to do when she lives in a backward country blind to the principle of universal health care? Organize her buddies, of course, and hit the bank hard. Out of the mouths of babes, it's the Robin Hood plan of socialized medicine -- rob the rich to treat the poor.

Actually, the writers are careful to steer away from any overt politicizing on this thorny issue -- the movie isn't meant to an under aged version of John Q. Instead, they head right on to the caper, and to the axiom that powers every children's yarn from the The Hardy Boys to Harry Potter -- the eternal truth that kids are just so much smarter than all those dim-bulb adults. So our callow robbers get along with the task of casing the joint, disarming the security system, buddying up to the guard dogs, and generally duping the usual quorum of dumb grownups discharging their familiar duties as comic relief.

All this should be more appealing than it is. Yet don't blame the child actors. Stewart, last seen cowering with Jodie Foster in The Panic Room, makes for a beguiling waif, poised on the cusp of adolescence and guiding her infatuated accomplices through the perilous joys of puppy love -- keep the barking down and no need to bite. And you can't fault the go-carts either -- three of them, one per thief, keen little speedsters leading the bamboozled cops on a merry chase.

Rather, the accusatory finger points to -- where else? -- the big people in the case, with vigorous wagging reserved for director Bart Freundlich. On the evidence of his past outings -- The Myth of Fingerprints and World Traveller -- the guy may know a thing or two about over earnest character studies, but he's not the man for this material. It requires some flash-and-dash, a bit of the Rodriguez magic -- the knack of making the kinetic stuff, like that go-cart chase, seem lively but not too serious, funny yet not merely silly. But here, under Freundlich's vice grip, the action just looks lumpy and static -- even those nifty carts are more stop than go.

The whole picture is like that, burdening the right cast with the wrong spirit. Watching Catch That Kid, you just want to arrest those adults -- not for stealing, which is hardly a crime in show biz, but for the far graver vice of not stealing with style.