For non-fans, maybe the best of the SPY KIDS movies

Forget the cardboard glasses--the man who gives three-dimensionality to Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is Ricardo Montalban. In a movie dominated by young kids and a video-game motif, this 82-year-old acting vet pulls off a couple of speeches that make the entire movie worthwhile. He was good in the second Spy Kids sequel, too--the smartest thing writer-director Robert Rodriguez did was allow Montalban his proper dues.

The dumbest thing Rodriguez did was bring back those silly glasses. Decades after technological advances have made movie stars zip through through space or toss spider-webs around NYC, they still try to use cheapo filtered lenses to convince moviegoers that an object is flying at them.

The gimmick befits the plot's cheesiness, though. Did Rodriguez really intend to do a big-budget version of Scooby-Doo and the Cyber-Chase? The story is that kid-spy Carmen (Alexa Vega) is trying to battle a mind-stealing toymaker (Sylvester Stallone in full ham) by entering his video game to shut it off. Instead, Carmen gets her mind stolen as well, and it's up to her kid brother Juni (Daryl Sabara, ever the weakest link in these flicks) to rescue her. (Carmen's parents seem strangely unconcerned about her plight, at least until the movie's climax calls for their participation.)

As if to honor the non-linear logic of video games, the plot goes all over the place. Over and over, the movie tells you that a certain event will surely kill Carmen and Juni, then the event happens and they pop right back up for more punishment, like a live-action Tom and Jerry.

And yet, there's just enough genuine humanity and hilarity to make the movie tolerable. A prologue where Alan Cumming cheerily explains how to use the 3-D glasses is quite a hoot. There are enough cameos by big-name good sports (George Clooney, Salma Hayek) to remind us that maybe it isn't all about the kids. And the movie's pro-family message, tacked on as it is, at least had me smiling by movie's end.

So unlike a lot of techno-based kiddie movies, Spy Kids 3-D is worth tagging along with your kids to watch. Heck, you'll need that kid to explain the toymaker's video game to you when the movie's over.

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is rated PG for very stylized scenes of violence and peril.