Fun and family bonding

If you were a child and your parents were feeling guilty about not spending enough quality time with you and wanted to make up for it with a movie ("And you can have a smoothie in the theater, honey!"), which movie would you choose? The makers of "Spy Kids" hope mightily that the answer will be this movie, and this alone.

"Spy Kids" opens the doors to a realm of cinema that had been strictly adult territory -- espionage, and shares all the genre's gadgetry, excitement, suave one-liners and miraculous, 11th-hour escapes with children. The only problem is that one can almost see the marketing people standing on the side of the set and barking orders -- there's a whole lot of stress on family values that rather gets in the way of true-blue spy entertainment. I mean, 007 never had to put up with that.