Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D (2011) Very Busy Mom Faces a Bigger Mission

Give me back my Carla Gugino. That’s what I couldn’t help thinking every time Jessica Alba — lovely to look at, utterly ordinary to watch — appeared on screen in “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D.” The fall-off in sexiness, soulfulness and wittiness from Ms. Gugino and Antonio Banderas, the parents in the first three “Spy Kids” films, to Ms. Alba and Joel McHale is whiplash steep.

And that’s just one of the ways this fourth “Spy Kids” installment, written and directed, as always, by Robert Rodriguez, comes up short. Visually dreary (don’t bother paying the 3-D premium), lazily yet confusingly plotted, dominated by jokes involving vomit and an endlessly flatulent baby, “All the Time in the World” feels more like straight-to-DVD filler than a chapter in one of the last decade’s most entertaining and sophisticated family-film franchises.

Ms. Alba — so luscious in her superspy cat suit that some of the family scenes start to get a little uncomfortable — plays Marissa, an aunt of the original spy kids, Carmen and Juni Cortez, who are now adults. Looking forward to her retirement from the spy game (she’s hugely pregnant when the film begins), Marissa joins forces with them to stop an evil mastermind from speeding up or stopping time (it isn’t clear which). The next generation of young agents — Marissa’s squabbling stepchildren and eventually her new baby — alternately help and hinder.

Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara return, now in supporting roles, as Carmen and Juni, representing practically the only on-screen connection to the earlier films. (Danny Trejo has an amusing cameo moment as their Uncle Machete, but key players like Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub and Steve Buscemi are gone.) Mr. Vega and Mr. Sabara look stiff and stranded in their underwritten adult parts; the new kids, Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook, exhibit charm and spunk but don’t have much more to work with.

Jeremy Piven, in several roles, tries hard to generate some comic sparks. Most of the (mildly) funny lines go to Ricky Gervais as the voice of a talking cyberdog.

Mr. McHale plays the goofball husband who doesn’t know that his wife is a spy; he’s the host of a reality television show called “Spy Hunter,” the joke being that, as with “Ghost Hunters,” there’s nothing to hunt — until it turns out that there is. He’s naturally funny but disappears for long stretches.

Midway through the movie, after the new set of siblings has been let in on their stepmother’s big secret, Ms. Vega leads them into a room where the artifacts of the original spy kids program — shut down seven years ago because of budget problems, she says — are stored. In the room are what appear to be models and sets from “Spy Kids” 1 through 3, a bit of a self-homage by Mr. Rodriguez that invokes a dangerous nostalgia for the giddy, Indiana-Jones-inside-a-toy-box spirit of those earlier films.

In fact, the eventual message of “All the Time in the World” — summed up by the quickly reformed, time-manipulating villain as, “You have to live life moving forward, not back” — could be taken as a rueful comment on the folly of trying, after eight years, to recapture the magic of three films made in a compressed three-year span with a consistent (and wildly talented) cast. Unless, of course, you’re just trying to milk a few more dollars out of the title. There’s all the time in the world for that.

“Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Lots of poo and goo; luckily the Aroma-Scope scratch-and-sniff cards mostly smell like various parts of a new car.



SPY KIDS

All the Time in the World in 4D

Opened on Friday nationwide.

Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez; directors of photography, Mr. Rodriguez and Jimmy Lindsey; edited by Dan Zimmerman; music by Mr. Rodriguez and Carl Thiel; costumes by Nina Proctor; produced by Mr. Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellán; released by Dimension Films. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

WITH: Jessica Alba (Marissa Cortez Wilson), Joel McHale (Wilbur Wilson), Alexa Vega (Carmen Cortez), Daryl Sabara (Juni Cortez), Rowan Blanchard (Rebecca Wilson), Mason Cook (Cecil Wilson), Ricky Gervais (Voice of Argonaut), Jeremy Piven (Timekeeper), Danny Trejo (Uncle Machete), Ricky Gervais (voice of Argonaut) and Belle and Genny Solorzano (Spy Baby).