D.C. MOVIE GUYS

Bill’s Review
Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London is a very bad movie. Neither simply worse than last year’s initial chapter nor bad in the typical kids movie cruddy kind of way. Rather it is bad in the joyless, humorless, soul-numbing, mind sapping, MGM-should-be-arrested-for-charging-money-to-see-it kind of bad.
If the movie has any redeeming features, they have escaped this reviewer although by the standards of such recent juvenile fare as Catch That Kid, they do not teach children that it is OK to steal (just OK to lie to your parents and kill for your country). As in the first movie, Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz of TV’s Malcolm in the Middle) is a teenager recruited by the CIA to be a spy (getting his license to kill before he gets his license to drive). Mom and Dad (Cynthia Stevenson and Daniel Roebuck) are still unaware and the ruse is maintained as the agency is using a summer camp as cover for a training site. But camp commandant, Victor Diaz (Keith Allen whose brother is the director of this misbegotten non-thriller) wants to sell some pilfered technology to a loony lord in London. And so under the guise of a kid’s orchestra (and with a clarinet that plays by itself), Cody is off to London.
There he meets up with an inept American agent (Anthony Anderson, well on his way to breaking all records for most appearances in bad movies) and a pretty British girl undercover for MI5. And then… oh, I just cannot go on. As if watching was not bad enough, I can actually feel brain cells dissolving recounting the story.
Original director Harald Zwart was rumored to have dropped out of this project due to MGM only wanting to raise the budget by $1 million (I suppose it would be too much to ask that it had been due to the screenplay needing more work). Subbing in a British art house director presumably working fast and cheap (although Mr. Allen’s filmography includes some credible films such as Twin Town and The Big Tease) and the generally hurried look of everything gives off the unmistakable odor of a project rushed into theatres to exploit what little cache this chimerical franchise possesses. While realizing Frankie Muniz’s career does not have much time left, he really should be a bit selective.
So when you combine a lifeless plot, lame jokes, tired situations, and the now-standard misbegotten morality, what you have is the movie equivalent of taking your kid over to Michael Jackson’s house for an overnight visit. Did I mention that it is bad?

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Short Guide to Writing About Film, A (7th Edition)

Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies

Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (with DVD and Writing about Movies Booklet)

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