New 'Spy Kids' smells of too much gimmickry

The scratch-and-sniff "Aroma-Scope" gimmick of

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World

in 4D

didn't work. Maybe I got a defective card, but the scents you're supposed to sample when the number flashes on the screen and you scratch the corresponding number on your card all smelled like burned artificial blueberry syrup.

So take away one "D" from this "4D" movie, one gimmick from a gimmick-laden kiddie comedy from the Robert Rodriguez Spy Kids factory. Gadgets, cheese puffs, and diapers fly off the screen in the cheesiest kid-friendly 3-D tradition. But chances are, you won't smell them. Maybe I caught a break, as Rodriguez, channeling his inner middle schooler, wants us to smell vomit, dog flatulence, and diapers.

All the Time in the World is a tepid tween comedy built on gimmicks like that, and on bad timekeeping puns. Good guys and villains are always promising to "stop his clock" or "punch his clock."

Agent Marissa Wilson, played by Jessica Alba, is another in a long line of Cortez clan counterintelligence officers. She's retired and has a baby with her new husband, who has two kids - Rebecca and Cecil (Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook), who don't like their stepmom. They think she's keeping secrets from them, which she is. Only when the stepmom's nemesis, Tick Tock (Jeremy Piven), gets out of jail and joins up with the masked super villain "The Timekeeper" do the kids learn Marissa's secret and find themselves caught up in her mission.

Dad (Joel McHale) does a "spies among us" TV show titled Spy Hunter, and he doesn't even know he's married to one. What's worse, he and Marissa are like a lot of parents - rushed, manic, missing out on quality time with the kids, which is the message Rodriguez hammers home here.

The message is tacked onto an absurdly complicated story that has multiple villains, heroes, and Pivens. Rodriguez needs the script only to take us from one gimmick to the next, and his lack of attention to it shows.

The gimmicks are supposed to provide the laughs because there aren't any in the script. Getting Ricky Gervais to do the voice of a robot dog is fine. But give the guy something funny to say. All the Pivens in the world aren't funny without funny business for them to be involved in.

The child stars are a pretty bland pair, but truthfully, they fare no worse than the adults. Nobody has much that's funny to say or cool to do. Even the spy gadgets are lame. And the stop-motion effects of the "time bomb" and other cinematic tricks don't lift All the Time in the World into anything beyond a "time killer, a time waster," and 89 minutes of your life you'll never get back.

Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. Distributed by Dimenson Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 29 mins.

Parent's guide: PG (action, rude humor).

Playing at: Area theaters.

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