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Agent Cody Banks
**1/2
Capsule-length
Cinema Review - September 7, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. USA.
102 minutes. Directed by Harald Zwart. Produced by David Glasser, Andreas
Klein, David Nicksay, Guy Oseary, Dylan Sellers. Written by Scott Alexander,
Larry Karaszewski, Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz; from a story by Jeffrey
Jurgensen. Starring Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon, Keith David,
Cynthia Stevenson, Arnold Vosloo, Daniel Roebuck, Ian McShane, Darrell Hammond,
Martin Donovan.
I don't watch a lot of "Malcolm in the Middle",
but I like it when I do watch, and Frankie Muniz brings a smile to my face.
He's got a craftiness to him, a face that implies a talent for getting into
scrapes and incredulously protesting when he gets caught. His last big movie
was "Big Fat Liar" -- perfect for him, and just a darn good comedy, sort
of like a younger version of the Ferris Bueller vibe.
"Agent Cody Banks" is fun too, but
not quite as much. Muniz is likeable as a junior high student who was enlisted
by the CIA at summer camp, and now has to infiltrate a private school, to
get to the daughter of a scientist whose boss is trying to make little robots
that can disable nuclear warheads and get the army with its pants down. There's
answering back, there's gadgets, there's some good stuff about how clueless
Cody is with girls. It's redundant to hear a little snatch of "Hot in Here"
every time Angie Harmon comes onscreen, but it's nice to see her in jumpsuits
that let out her cleavage to a really pointless degree.
The movie is bouncy and colourful, and cheesy
in a nice way. Where it outstays its welcome is the last half hour -- everything
has to be wrapped up with an attack on the villain's lair, involving pointless
action scenes and boring delays as the heroes get tied up in various traps
and have to keep witting their way through before the clock runs out. Yada.
Yada. Yada.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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