YMMV / Spy Kids

• Alternative Character Interpretation: With its agents constantly going rogue, and its use of children for dangerous missions, it's not hard to argue that the OSS are corrupt and villainous, particularly when Juni decides to quit being an OSS agent after seeing how some of their top agents are expected to act.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Isle of Dreams", the song played during the end credits of the second movie.
  • The third movie's end credits has "Heart Drive", a rap-metal duet between Alexa Vega and Bobby Edner with a bitchin' chiptune-inspired synth hook sprinkled on top. It's so cheesy it 180's around to being awesome.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:

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  • The appearance of the "real Guy" (played by Elijah Wood) in the third movie. To clarify, he just suddenly shows up, gives an inspirational speech... then he gets severely curb-stomped, booting him out of the game. He is never talked about again.
  • Both the first and second film end with a post-credits scene, the first being a shot of inside Floop's castle and the second of the treehouse. Nothing happens in either sequence.
• Contested Sequel: Some say the second movie is along the same lines of the original, while others think it's worse.
• Critical Dissonance: The first and second films have 93% and 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively, but audience scores of 45% and 38%. Also, on IMDb, the average ratings for the films are are 5.4 and 5.1.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • First movie: Floop and Machete.
  • Second movie: Dinky Winks, Ralph and Romero.

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  • Third movie: The Beta Testers and Demetra.
• First Installment Wins: The first movie was the best received.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The first scene of the first movie is Alexa Vega in a white nightgown, staring out the window. The same sort of scene that happens several years later.
  • Also, in Game Over, Juni being referred to, within a video game, as "the Guy".
    • And when the real "Guy" does show up, he dies almost instantly. Sounds about right.
  • At the beginning, Juni has warts on his hands. Later on, the same actor stars in World's Greatest Dad, as a frequent masturbator. You know what they say...
  • In 3D: Game Over, Juni at one point is controlling a giant yellow robot.
  • The second movie has a watch that can do virtually everything but tell time. Seems like Apple took this concept seriously.
  • Also in the second movie, Steve Buscemi plays Romero who creates hybrid creatures that inhabit in his island and asks a memetic existential question about how "God stays in Heaven because He too lives in fear of what he's created here on Earth?" More than a decade later, Buscemi would play God in Miracle Workers.

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  • Robert Rodriguez later went on to direct Alita: Battle Angel, which is co-written by Laeta Kalogridis, who will be creating Live-Action Adaptation of Sword Art Online, which gets frequent comparisons with Spy Kids 3D.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • FLOOP IS A MADMAN HELP US SAVE US!
  • "Do you think God stays in Heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created?" ^Explanation An extremely popular quote from Spy Kids 2, which a lot of people feel was way too good of a line for the movie it was used in. It's often used in a similar vein to Futurama's "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" to express horror at the apparent stupidity of the human race
  • SOMEBODY RING THE DINKSTER?
    • And then the above quote mutated further into "The Dinkster Channel". ^Explanation  There is now a YouTube channel called "DinksterDaily" which does nothing but repost the exact same clip of the above quote every single day of the year. As of August 2019, this has been going on without missing a single day for nearly three entire years.
  • The sheer lunacy of "The Guy" being built up in Game Over only to appear and be booted immediately afterwards. Elijah Wood playing him for basically 2 minutes makes it more surreal.
  • "shit talking mushrooms"^Explanation Another meme quoted line from Island of Lost Dreams during Carmen's fight with Gary Giggles. The actual line was " You're so full of shiitake mushrooms", however due to Carmen's off beat pronouncation, it make it sound like "shit talking mushrooms". The skeletons gasping during the line makes it obvious the writers knew what they wrote.
• Never Live It Down: Although already intended as the final entry of the series upon its initial release, the third film is still widely considered a Franchise Killer not just for its poor acting and plethora of unfulfilled plot points, but also for its underwhelming 3D effects on which it was banking its entire success.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Fooglies and what they really are.
  • Don't forget their song. Floop is a madman, help us, save us, Floop is a madman, help us, save us!
  • And this happens to their dad!
• Padding:
  • Juni's relationship with Alexandra in the second film, who's daddy issues are barely explained and who doesn't reappear for the third film; Demetra herself isn't much better, and is forgotten about entirely after her Heroic Sacrifice.
  • To add to that, Juni is terminated from the OSS for all of a few hours before Carmen signs him back up, and nobody makes any fuss about this change.
  • Elijah Wood's cameo as "The Guy", who lasts for all of sixty seconds upon his reveal.
• Sequelitis:
  • The second film arguably falls under this despite its respectable rating with fans and critics. The third however plays this trope straight between its copious amounts of Special Effect Failure, Dull Surprise acting and disjointed plot.
  • And here comes a fourth....
• Special Effect Failure: The 3D in the third movie is very poorly done, barely resembling 3D at all. Understandable, seeing as this movie came out when the advent of 3D was still trying to get on its feet, and the movie itself was filmed using a primitive version of James Cameron's 3D camera system.
  • The greenscreening is also incredibly blatant, especially during the fight scene at the end of the movie.
  • One from early in the first movie involves Ingrid moving her chair over to Gregorio. The track on which her chair is on is very clearly visible. Whether this is justifiable as yet another spy gadget's visible elements is debatable.
• Squick:
  • At one point in the second movie, Gerti and Gary wind up in a desert (due to Carmen and Juni's meddling) and are unsure of where they are. They fall into what at first seems to be a mud pit, only to look around and see camels surrounding them. Horrified, Gerti exclaims that it is, indeed, camel poop. Skip a few seconds into the future, and you see Gary opening his mouth and spitting a big chunk of...er, "mud" out of his teeth.
  • The fourth film sees Marissa uses her baby's used diapers as weapons against several mooks in the movie.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Gregorio imagining himself trouncing a bully's parent (which he easily could) and impressing Juni. All he wants is to be his son's hero.
  • The Time Keeper's backstory in the fourth movie. Frozen in time, forced to watch his father grow old, wasting his life trying to find a way to free him, only to be released by a Deus ex Machina after his death. Say what you will about the rest of the film, that is heartbreaking.
• Toy Ship: Juni and Alexandra in the second film, and Juni and Demetra in the third film (with a Ship Tease of Juni and Gertie at the end, too). Carmen, who at least looked old enough to be interested in the opposite sex, only got an unreciprocated crush on Gary in the second film.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Some of the battle suits from the third movie are quite laughable. "The Guy" in particular looks absolutely hysterical for a supposed badass.
  • The Time Keeper's costume would have looked just fine if he wore an actual clock shaped helmet and not just a rubbery, plastic mask. All the funding of the OSS and he couldn't get himself a decent mask?

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