Youth spoof games

Yet another youth spoof spy movie cut from the same cloth as Spy Kids and television's Alias, in which an adolescent gets to act out the fantasy scenarios of James Bond or Mission: Impossible.

Here, Frankie Muniz (TV's Malcolm in the Middle) stars as a CIA trainee who is sent on a mission to seduce the teenage daughter of an international villain and discover his plan for world domination.

However, although Cody Banks can hold his own with Tom Cruise when it comes to manipulating gadgets and duffing up bad guys, he is woefully tongue-tied around girls.

Harald Zwart's movie is slick and actionpacked but lacks the anarchic humour of Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids movies and walks a wobbly line between teenage smuggery and violent mayhem.

Muniz has the trapped-between-twoages look of The Tin Drum's Oskar - 15 going on 45 - and what Ian McShane thinks he is doing as a blackfaced "Asian villain" is anyone's guess.

Agent Cody Banks
Cert: cert12A