Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (2011)

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez | 89 minutes | action, comedy, adventure, family, science fiction | Actors: Jessica Alba, Alexa Vega, Antonio Banderas, Danny Trejo, Jeremy Piven, Daryl Sabara, Ricky Gervais, Joel McHale, Tiger Darrow, Rowan Blanchard, RJ Smith-Tillman, Melissa Cordero, Mason Cook, Roger Edwards, Alcides Dias, Kevin A. Green, Jett Good, Annika Horne

Ten years after the last installment of the entertaining family franchise ‘Spy Kids’, Robert Rodriguez is back to complete the quartet. He was one of the first filmmakers to bring the third dimension back into the limelight with ‘Spy Kids 3’, and with the fourth part, ‘Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World’ he plays aromascope as an asset. With the cinema ticket, the visitor receives a card with eight scratch ‘n sniff boxes, the well-known marketing tool of major perfume brands. When one of the eight songs appears in the film, scratch open the box to add an extra experience to watching the film. In a slightly filled room it is not necessary to scratch yourself, the smells are penetrating enough to overpower the popcorn or tortilla chip smells.

The story then: Marisa Wilson (Jessica Alba) has said goodbye to her secret spy life because she finds her place in her new family more important. With husband Wilbur (Joel McHale), she forms a blended family: the unnamed one-year-old baby and twins Cecil and Rebecca (Mason Cook and Rowan Blanchard) from Wilbur’s previous marriage. The latter in particular has difficulty accepting the new family situation. Marisa does her very best and for a moment the two seem to get closer, until Marisa’s old work throws a spanner in the works. Her old boss, Danger D’Amo (Jeremy Piven), enlists his former top spy because she’s the only one who can stop the Timekeeper. Like many villains in family movies, the Timekeeper suffers from megalomania. He thinks that humanity is wasting time arguing and therefore appropriates it, with the result that time is speeding up on Earth. At first it is still about minutes, but time quickly flies by with hours and days at the same time. Marisa must do everything in her power to save her stepchildren and eliminate old enemies.

‘Spy Kids 4’ shouldn’t be called ‘Spy Kids’ unless the twins themselves spring into action. Confronted with their stepmother’s secret career, they immediately find her a lot cooler, although it takes some getting used to the talking robot dog Argonaut. Sent to OSS headquarters by Marisa’s precautions, they soon run into Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega, one of the original Spy Kids). She helps Rebecca and Cecil acquire cool gadgets so that they can also use their powers to defeat the Timekeeper.

The moral of Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World is clear: Wilbur hardly ever has time for his kids. He is busy making his TV show ‘Wilbur Wilson, Spy Hunter’ a success. The idea behind it: in five years he will be ‘in’ and he will have enough time to spend with his family. But what he loses sight of is that children grow up faster than you think. Why wait? Your family is the most important thing there is, spend more time around them! Rodriguez also makes this film with the best of intentions. It’s just a shame that the film gets stuck in good intentions.

Although the story of ‘Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World’ is fairly easy to follow this time, the characters never really come to life. Rebecca and Cecil lack depth. We never get to know more about Cecil than that he is hard of hearing and Rebecca turns out to be fond of cleaning and baking. The latter never produces a smile, but the rest of the film doesn’t make you laugh either. Jessica Alba is quite colorless as a stepmother and Jeremy Piven also makes little impression with his (triple) role. The setting of the film is variable: sometimes it is very imaginative, but more often it seems to have got rid of it with a jantje-van-leid. The target audience will still regard the film as fun entertainment, but parents watching – even those with whom Rodriguez can still break a pot after his mistakes – will be bored to death with ‘Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World’.