Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
Directed by Kevin Allen
Written by Don Rhymer
Starring Frankie Muniz, Anthony Anderson and Hannah Spearritt!
Classification: G
Rating: *
Internal memo: Top secret. Re: Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London. Read, chew and swallow to prevent falling into enemy hands.
Purpose of mission: Routine junior spy movie, in the line of Spy Kids, the first Agent Cody Banks and Catch that Kid. Based on premise that young audiences cannot get enough of stories about kids with gadgets, kung fu and fast vehicles. In retrospect, assumption appears to have been wildly overconfident.
Causes of failure can be isolated to following key points.
1. Timing. The mission, hereinafter known as ACB2, appears to have been rushed to completion to cash in before Frankie Muniz, the now 19-year-old star of the Fox-TV hit Malcolm in the Middle, matured from cute teen actor to a merely short adult one.
2. Internal dissension. Archives reveal the movie's first director, Harold Zwart, left because of cheap budget, most of which seems to have been spent on special effects, including a scene in which a German shepherd, wearing mind-control headgear, plays the piano. (Note: Piano-playing German shepherd actually interesting, in a surreal way.) Zwart's replacement is director Kevin Allen (The Big Tease), who shows an uncanny knack for dropping the punch line for the optimum clunk.
3. Absence of credibility. Cody, though an accomplished spy in mid-teens, still uses the cover of the same children's summer camp used in the last movie. Credibility is further eroded when Cody goes to London posing as an elite music student in an international youth orchestra to retrieve a mind-control device from a power-mad scientist — and it doesn't rain once the entire time he's there.
4. A chemically inert romance. In the original Agent Cody Banks, Muniz was teamed with bubbly teen star Hilary Duff, who has developed her own successful career. Here in ACB2, his romantic lack of interest is the blandly pretty 23-year-old Hannah Spearritt, formerly of the English pop band/television series S Club 7, the Baby Spice of her generation.
5. Stereotypes mistaken for jokes. Cody is assigned a "handler" named Derek (ubiquitous black comic actor, Anthony Anderson), who establishes himself as the youth orchestra's cook. When not flailing about in the kitchen amid crashing pans and food, Derek serves guests catfish and grits, because he's black. In a similar vein, the English butler is doddering, the wife of the wealthy castle-owner is lascivious, and the little Indian girl in the orchestra speaks ornate, syntactically confused English.
6. Food fights and flatulence jokes fail to spark expected hilarity.
7. Copycat syndrome. A scene featuring various celebrity impersonators playing world leaders engaging in fisticuffs was moderately funny when it appeared in the Leslie Nielsen comedy The Naked Gun, back in 1988.
Conclusion: After 90 minutes of diligently searching the premises of ACB2, no evidence of mass entertainment can be found. Recommend cancellation of all future similar missions.
