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2008 Browns season
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2008 Bengals season
Miami vs. Xavier
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3-D glasses help mask lack of a story in 'Game Over'
Grade: C+
Verdict: It's the gimmick that sells. This movie without 3-D would be three times more boring.
By BOB LONGINO
Cox News Service
Wearing 3-D glasses and ducking giant frog tongues popping out at you from the screen are guaranteed to make you forget how inane a movie's story is.
"Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over" is a tribute to the wacky world of three-dimensional movies. That's a movie gimmick that's been foisted on every other generation in the last half century, so why not dump it on modern-day kids? After all, they bought "Pokémon."
"Game Over" doesn't have much of a story. It's all about kids placed through the magic of science into a video game to try to win it in order to save the world. It's never more complicated or more interesting than that. Special 3-D glasses are handed out to you with your ticket. The movie will tell you when to put them on and when to take them off.
The plot dictates that Daryl Sabara, who plays spy son Juni Cortez, is the main actor. Sylvester Stallone, new to the "Spy Kids" series, plays a quartet of nerds and buffoons and is the film's villain. Most everyone else, including Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Holland Taylor, Mike Judge, Salma Hayek, Steve Buscemi, Alan Cumming and Tony Shalhoub, has very small parts. The adult with the best gig is 82-year-old Ricardo Montalban, who gets to perform as audaciously over- the-top as he did in "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan."
Writer-director Robert Rodriguez has solidified his place in Hollywood by not only making a salable movie on a financial shoestring and artistic pluck ("El Mariachi"), but a pretty good horror comedy ("From Dusk Till Dawn") and a fairly inventive kids film ("Spy Kids"). The latter earned more than $112 million at the box office.
Naturally, success begat "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams," which kids still liked but any parent worth his or her salt would have jettisoned to the bottom of the Dead Sea. It was unwatchable.
"Game Over," which started out as its own entity but which Rodriguez later fashioned into the threequel in the "Spy Kids" franchise, is successful because of 3-D.
It makes you concentrate on the outer portions of the screen to see characters' hands seemingly reach out into the audience. It makes you duck punches and pokes. It makes you worry less about how bland some of the specific tasks in the video game are that the kids have to perform.
Oh, and the 3-D process will hurt your eyes. The onscreen characters, who also wear 3-D glasses, even say so when it's time to take them off.
Kids won't care. They'll have a fine enough time at "Game Over."
