Spy Kids 3: Game Over

The 3D stuff works really well.

Kids will love it, but adults may find it flat.

It's the charisma of the child stars which carries the picture. And the infectious energy of the creator, whose frothy franchise has now run its course.

[I]t's not really a movie, it's a video game that doesn't work.

This featured particularly unsightly 3-D effects at the multiplex, so it’s a minor mercy to catch it in 2-D at home.

Strewn with adolescent puns and nerdish video-game humor, and the best 3D effects ever hurled at an audience (still fun even in tradition 2D), you hardly even notice that all pretense at story has been tossed off the screen with everything else.

There's a lot of hand-to-hand action, just like a video game, that gets harder as you move up a level. Also, like a video game, there is no story. You have no idea who is fighting whom. Or why.

Spy Kids 3 is much sharper and funnier than the second outing, but the missing pieces, namely the parents and sister, are sorely needed.