Review: Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London

The film lasciviously devours all basic notions of intelligence and sophistication in its destructive, rampaging wake.

Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
Photo: MGM

Kevin Allen’s Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London unleashes itself upon us like an unchained Cerberus, lasciviously devouring all basic notions of intelligence and sophistication in its destructive, rampaging wake. This is a cannibal holocaust in the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing guise of children’s entertainment. My Slant colleague Ed Gonzalez slapped his own 4-F on the first Agent Cody Banks, labeling it “kiddie porn.” We might best extend that metaphor to this even more officious sequel: Call it “kiddie porn-squared.”

The discomforting double entendres fly fast and furious from frame one of Destination London. Teenage super spy Cody (Frankie Muniz) attends a C.I.A. training facility named Kamp Woody (can’t wait for Susan Sontag’s break-it-down essay “Notes on Kamp”) where the camera—much like the film’s fey, slick-haired villains—leers and lingers over young male flesh. Not to be undone, the filmmakers become equal-opportunity sex offenders once the locale switches to London, taking in, with oblivious, lustful zeal, the fishnet stockings and va-va-va-voom!-ness of Cody’s underage female compatriot, Emily (Hannah Spearritt).

Has there ever been a movie so unaware of its own pedophilic tendencies? A rotten-toothed character named Jerksalot adds fuel to that rhetorical fire, to say nothing of the constant references to Cody’s “instrument” (a phallic clarinet, natch). But the ignorance doesn’t stop there. As Cody’s sidekick Derek, Anthony Anderson extends cinema’s dubious tradition of minstrelsy, slow-wittedly tripping and traipsing his way into the Stepin Fetchit hall of fame.

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No surprise, then, that Allen and screenwriter Don Rhymer tiptoe around obvious race and class issues. One out of many: When juxtaposing Cody’s elegant sleeping quarters with Derek’s second-rate servant’s accommodations, the compositions pack no satirical punch, so the whole sequence becomes little more than a rancid sight gag.

Even more offensive is the multi-culti rogue’s gallery of music students who befriend Cody and are integral parts of the film’s forgettable spy-plot pastiche. The students are obvious skin-tonal stabs at political correctness, though this liberal knee-jerk motion is negated by the characters’ depthless verbal utterances—all accent-appropriate one-liners that emphasize a racist alien-ness. That these same kids are then exploited as peacenik mouthpieces in a climactic musical sequence featuring a bust-a-move Queen Mother (a joke that, admittedly, never gets old) is reason enough to ring up John Walsh and register this second Agent Cody Banks with the cinematic equivalent of the Megan’s Law database.

Score: 
 Cast: Frankie Muniz, Anthony Anderson, Hannah Spearriit, Daniel Roebuck, Keith Allen, Anna Chancellor, Cynthia Stevenson, Connor Widdows  Director: Kevin Allen  Screenwriter: Don Rhymer  Distributor: MGM  Running Time: 100 min  Rating: PG  Year: 2004  Buy: Video

Keith Uhlich

Keith Uhlich's writing has been published in The Hollywood Reporter, BBC, and Reverse Shot, among other publications. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle.

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