Agent Cody Banks Review
by Tim Wick
I watched Agent Cody Banks on a Friday afternoon, the perfect time to watch a children's movie. To get the most out of a movie made for kids, you need to see it with some kids. A young man behind me introduced himself as Cody and he was excited to see the movie because the young protagonist had the same name.
Whether or not I enjoyed the movie is not the point. I was not the target audience. Cody was the target audience. Cody told me that he really liked the film. Anything that I write beyond this is merely the conceit of someone twenty years too old to ever truly appreciate the film.
Agent Cody Banks is a juvenile James Bond. The film is part parody and part homage. Certainly we have seen a number of Bond parodies as of late. From Austin Powers to Undercover Brother, there is no shortage of spy parody films. The Juvenile spy genre has its own series of films with Spy Kids. With all these takes on the spy genre, Agent Cody Banks is entering an already overcrowded market.
While the film is not embarrassingly poor, I'm not sure it adds anything new. Many of the jokes in this film were already used in other films of the same genre. Cody has a phone that rings just like the phone in Our Man Flint. I wonder if the makers of the movie pulled that joke from Our Man Flint or from the parody already used in Austin Powers?
The film's attempt to appeal to an older audience is to put Angie Harmon into extremely tight-fitting clothing. Angie is a fine looking woman and tight-fitting clothing certainly does look good on her. I think it may take a little more than an attractive woman to make this film accessible to anyone other than Cody when he is five years older.
The target market, of course, is Cody. He was about ten. I noticed him laughing throughout the film at every joke a ten year old would certainly find funny. He was really into the movie and I was mostly into noticing how much he was into the movie.
Now Cody is not the most discriminating of movie goers. I know this because he is ten. My three year old has watched Atlantis five times in the last week. Kids don't always understand what makes a movie good or bad but they know what they like. The studios know this as well and are completely happy to pump out substandard material because the kids will love it anyway.
But Agent Cody Banks is not substandard. The production values are what one would expect from a major motion picture and the film does a fine job referencing the genre that it parodies. That these jokes are fairly juvenile is to be expected because juveniles are supposed to be the people getting the jokes. To me, the humor felt a little bit forced. My sense of humor is more sophisticated than that of a ten year old. This film understood that and managed to keep the humor focused on a kid's level.
That means some potty humor because kids find it funny. Cody sure did.
As in all films like Agent Cody Banks, the kids are the heroes and the adults are there to be rescued. All kids want to believe that they are the heroes of their own lives. Movies like this allow them to live that vicarious fantasy. They don't want the adults to save the day because they can do it on their own.
On all these levels, the film is a success. It is well aware of its demographic and plays to that demographic consistently. It is folly to think that all youth films must be partially directed to the adults in the audience. Certainly, this will make it more likely the film will make a lot of money but it isn't as true to its base audience.
Agent Cody Banks is not a family movie because it's not for the whole family. It is specifically made for your 8 Ð 14 kid, probably male. The movie was made for Cody and Cody loved it. No matter what I think, I have to admit that Cody's opinion means a lot more than mine.
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