Harald Zwart’s Agent Cody Banks reimagines your average James Bond flick as kiddie porn. Frankie Muniz (“Malcolm in the Middle”) stars as an elite undercover agent for the C.I.A. advised to win the affections of a young hottie (Hilary Duff) so the government can move in on the girl’s father, who’s built a special kind of Nanobot that can do more than just clean oceans of accidental oil-spills. The C.I.A. trains Cody on how to talk to girls and ends up promoting child pornography as a result. The young boy is handed X-ray glasses for no apparent reason other than to give the creepy older men of the C.I.A. a peek at what lies beneath a 15-year-old rich girl’s couture outfit. A simulated teenage girl comes on to Cody but the only attention she gets is from the group of 40-year-olds trying to cramp his style. Cody’s “handler”/“partner” Ronica (Angie Harman) seems to have stepped out of a Playboy centerfold and comes with her own soundtrack. Her eye-magnet breasts are easily the film’s most inspired creations; all other gadgets and gizmos may as well be lame rejects from the set of Spy Kids. Cody’s mission to save his young girlfriend is sweet enough but one has to wonder what kind of video collection the film’s four screenwriters have stashed in their basements that the relationship between adults and kids in the film is so uncomfortably hot-to-trot. The Feds have more evidence here than they have on Pee Wee Herman.
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