Look, I’ve seen all the others. I was obligated. On most levels, this entry is a misfire, a confused retread of earlier Spy Kids (the plot of the first, the skeletons of the second, the video game worship of the 3rd) with a worse cast. Banderas and Gugino are replaced by Zachary Levi and Gina Rodriguez in one of the biggest downgrades ever seen, and even Trejo stays far away. The effects have only gotten worse and lost their charm. The writing’s only a slight step up from the last one, and that’s an incredibly low bar.

And yet. It has some surprising critiques of its spy agency that feels surprisingly pointed at times and rejects punitive methods in favor of rehabilitation. It was wrong of the parents to destabilize a country and take the resources of its king. The kids even say putting the villain in a prison won’t make him better. There’s something here. It’s nowhere near done often enough or executed well enough to make this anything approaching good, but it shows Rodriguez wasn’t just phoning it in. He was attempting something, and that puts it above Spy Kids 4.