There are two kinds of child actors. There are those, like the terrific Evan Rachel Wood, who act with a flair and fury that make them seem like junior versions of our revered serious actors (she’s our youthquake Jodie Foster). Then there are the young stars, like Frankie Muniz and Hilary Duff, who seemed to have learned everything there is about acting from MTV’s “Cribs.” They’re not bad actors, per se, it’s just that all they see to acting is the stardom; they’re the next generations of walking consumer billboards. I would have a lot more respect for them if they bothered to star in a movie as forceful as, say, the galvanizing teen nightmare “Thirteen,” but all they ever make are Happy Meal movies.
It’s an amazing feat, but “Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London” is an even thinner bit of plastic than the first one was. It’s a joylessly pandering sop to the family audience that manages to eliminate what little vestiges of wit and humor the original had (and that wasn’t much to begin with). You could call them both junior variations on James Bond films, but that would be a disservice to both 007 and the fanciful whimsy of the first “Spy Kids” movie, which did the whole kiddie-Bond plot with more imagination and panache than both “Banks” films combined.
Besides, isn’t the 18-year-old Muniz getting a little too old for these dress-up games anyway? The actor no longer looks like an awkward pubescent kid anymore; he’s growing into the confidence of adulthood. That may explain why Muniz looks bored running around playing secret agent man here. “ACB 2” is as cheap-looking and as perfunctory as any quickie sequel is expected to be and Muniz looks like he wishes he were elsewhere – like getting punk’d again by Ashton Kutcher.
The nominal plot has Muniz’s Cody Banks going undercover as a brilliant clarinetist at a prestigious music school in London. He’s there to stop his growling, gruff former CIA instructor Diaz (Keith Allen), who has gone rogue and stolen a mind-control device, and is now working with the sophisticate husband of the school’s headmistress.
In London, Cody is given a new handler (Anthony Anderson, replacing Angie Harmon), a screw-up banished to nothing missions in England until Cody came along. How funny is Anderson here? Well, let’s just say he creates about as many laughs here as he did in “Kangaroo Jack.” Anyone who’s seen that movie will know how rough going these waters are.
Cody’s also given a female “love interest” to play off (she’s played by Hannah Spearritt, from the Brit pop septet S Club 7, who looks like her age of 23) but there’s no chemistry there; it’s another tossed off element in a tossed together movie. “ACB 2” is as humorless and unadventurous as knock-offs come; its entertainment value is akin to being forced to go the dentist.
