AGENT CODY BANKS 2: DESTINATION LONDON
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Frankie Muniz, Anthony Anderson, Cynthia Stevenson, Daniel Roebuck
screenplay by Don Rhymer
directed by Kevin Allen
THE CHEETAH GIRLS
*/**** Image C Sound B Extras C-
starring Raven, Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, Sabrina Bryan
screenplay by Alison Taylor, based on the series of books by Deborah Gregory
directed by Oz Scott
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here’s how it works. The entertainment machine churns out low-quality wish-fulfillment fantasies for ‘tweens and teenagers, then print and web outlets assign grown men and women to review them. Yes, the logic behind this weird symbiosis is elusive, as few teenagers are savvy enough to read reviews and few adult reviewers (beyond the occasional junket flunky) are possibly going to recommend them to anyone else. But somebody somewhere must benefit from this arrangement, because I have two such discs staring me in the face right now: one is the Frankie Muniz vehicle Agent Cody Banks 2, the other is a Disney Channel TV movie called The Cheetah Girls. Both are fantasies of juvenile mastery, both are scrubbed clean and chaste, both seem to have been dashed off in an afternoon by drunken hacks, and I guarantee you that both will make anyone over the age of fifteen want to poke their eyes out with a metal spike. But that’s just me. I’m 31.
I somehow managed to miss the original Agent Cody Banks (I’ll light a candle for you, Walter), but I nonetheless got the lay of the sequel fairly quickly. After some tired convolutions at a CIA station/summer camp for young agents, it is revealed that the camp director has buggered off to England to help implement a device designed to “control people’s minds–in a bad way!” Clearly, this is a job for Cody Banks (Muniz), and thus the teenage operative hightails it to London to pose as a classical music student so as to keep tabs on the brilliant evil scientist who is perfecting the nefarious technology. Aiding him is bumbling black operative Derek (Anthony Anderson), who naturally poses as the music school’s cook; he wastes no time in introducing Banks to the Bondian gadgets that will aid his mission and bore us silly with their implementation. Things are ridden fast, things go boom; people jump-kick other people and the world is saved. All hail Cody, our pubescent saviour!
There isn’t a single surprise in the whole film. Not only is the script (by various hands) full of old jokes and feeble action scenes, but director Kevin Allen also manages to bungle the few decent lines with his bad timing and bland visuals. And with the exception of female student Emily (Hannah Spearritt), the English characters are sclerotic caricatures that suggest a fever dream of a junior-high Monty Python nerd–one cringes in embarrassment for the actor who acts as Q division, made to exaggerate his accents and mannerisms into something resembling an epileptic seizure. But what truly rankles is the racism that blights many of the supporting characters. It’s no shock to find Anderson humiliated at the hands of a childish Stepin Fetchit character, but it could be worse: you could be his obsequious South Asian driver Kumar (Rod Silvers), a subordinate to a subordinate; or you could be one of the international stereotypes that populate the music school, like the poor Indian nerd-girl who creepily invites Cody to be her “woodwind buddy.” Is this the kind of thing you want to encourage in so-called family entertainment?
Initially, The Cheetah Girls looks to be one-up on Banks 2, at least in the racial sensitivity department: it’s got a multi-ethnic cast of girls sometimes dealing with problems that wouldn’t occur within the confines of Banks‘ middle-class whiteys. Based on a popular series of young-adult books, the film deals with the trials of a teenage group of R&B singers called, yes, The Cheetah Girls; they’re led (more or less) by Disney TV star Raven and flanked by Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, and Sabrina Bryan. Despite appearing to strike the big time when their talent show audition is viewed by record executive Jackal Johnson, problems arise when a) Raven becomes drunk with power and begins to boss around the other girls; b) Johnson and his cronies try to dumb down the Cheetahs’ act; c) one of the girls tries to conceal that she lives in a foster group home; and d) another of the girls must deal with her absent divorcee mother.
But despite its little stabs at relevance, The Cheetah Girls manages to trivialize every issue it raises. Like some acid-flashback “Degrassi” episode directed by Britney Spears, it alternates between patronizing sympathy for the afflicted and peppy, ridiculous music numbers; problems pop up only to be neutralized in minutes and painful confrontations dissolve into reconciliation. Despite the potential for ongoing trauma with some of the situations, the final reel assures that all problems have been permanently resolved. As for the artistic-integrity angle, don’t even get me started–the wonder is how the filmmakers can make a distinction between the prefab pop of the Cheetahs and the allegedly less “real” concoction of Jackal Johnson. If ever there were an argument against the homogenizing forces of Disney, The Cheetah Girls would be it: it takes the pain of life and the joy of creation and shamefully subverts both for the sake of selling product. Even if kids love it, they deserve much better.
THE DVDs
MGM’s Agent Cody Banks 2 arrives on DVD in the form of a flipper containing fullscreen/2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced widescreen transfers that suffer from slight bleeding. Otherwise, the image is beautifully rendered, with greens especially coming through with excellent saturation. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is equally fine; perhaps this is not a genius mix, but it makes smooth use of the surround channels, especially where incidental music is involved.
Extras are as numerous as they are unnecessary. A feature called “Spy on the Set: Visual Cast Commentary” features Muniz, Anderson, and Spearritt interrupting the film at odd intervals to tell uninspiring factoids; a real commentary would have been far less intrusive and probably yielded far more information. The “Agent Mode Interactive Quiz” is another pop-up feature in which Muniz and Anderson ask trivia questions so easy that they insult even the ‘tween audience at which the film is aimed. Next is a featurette entitled “Agent Cody Banks: Back in Action”, in which Muniz and various other participants state the obvious and act like the film is pregnant with meaning; a disc defect made this cakk out at the 7-minute mark on my review copy (a retail pull), but really, I’m not complaining. Three deleted scenes and three extended scenes are largely excessive exposition by the villains and wisely-excised action bits, the only interesting one involving Cody’s mind-controlled hand being guided by a stagehand who one presumes would be digitally erased later. A trailer gallery includes Stellaluna, The Legend of Johnny Lingo, Hamilton Mattress, Crocodile Hunter, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, with trailers for the original Agent Cody Banks, Good Boy!, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Kids, and Hi-5 cuing up automatically upon inserting the disc. A 15% off coupon for LaSenza Girl completes the package.
Disney’s The Cheetah Girls disc is a pretty haphazard affair. The 1.33:1 image whipsaws between acceptable clarity and disastrous grain, with scenes of darkness turning into a sea of rogue pixels. The Dolby 5.1 soundmix is acceptable but disappointing, the surround channels largely relegated to shadowing the fronts. As for extras, there’s a 10-minute alternate ending that doesn’t differ all that much from the one that made the cut with the exception of an uplifting (and groan-inducing) final shout-out to the audience; three music videos with footage culled largely from the film; two Raven music videos from various Disney TV soundtracks; and “The Cheetah Girls: Behind the Spots”, a 5-minute pile of fluff that purports to be a making-of featurette. Trailers for the “Kim Possible” TV show, the full-length Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time, the Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen movie and soundtrack, Ella Enchanted, The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, The Princess Diaries Special Edition, and Lizzie McGuire are also included. A booklet of Disney coupons and promotions rounds out the package.
CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Lindsay Lohan, Adam Garcia, Glenne Headly, Carol Kane
screenplay by Gail Parent, based on the novel by Dyan Sheldon
directed by Sara Sugarman
by Bill Chambers There’s so much wrong with Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, it’s difficult to know where to begin; if the film’s recourse is to protest that it wasn’t made for viewers like me (i.e., grown men), then I can only offer that being demographically challenged hasn’t exactly hindered my enjoyment of The WB’s output. (Of course, the movie fizzled at the box office despite the hype pendulum swinging in the direction of star Lindsay Lohan, so maybe the point is moot.) One of those ersatz hip movies in which our teen heroine, Lola (Lohan), nicknames her arch nemesis “The Great Santini” because the screenwriter has a good thirty years on the character, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen follows a Soho kid after she’s uprooted to the New Jersey suburbs by her mother (Glenne Headly, practically playing an apparition). At her new school, Lola befriends fellow misfit/”Sidarthur” fanatic Ella (Alison Pill, whose screen presence is infinitely more appealing than Lohan’s) and wins the lead in the school play: a contemporized version of “Pygmalion” complete with musical numbers–but not My Fair Lady. Again showing the filmmakers’ ages, the big number is David Bowie’s “Changes,” a penetrating rock hymn that sounds like a commercial jingle the way Lohan sings it. In the meantime, the picture flirts with a Boy Who Cried Wolf allegory, with Lola pretending to personally know Sidarthur‘s lead singer Stu–pun alert! pun alert!–Wolff (Adam Garcia, still starved for charisma) and lying that her father (Tom McCamus) is dead when in fact he’s a famous children’s author. Her comeuppance? A popularity-sealing house call from Stu and a kiss from her afterthought of a suitor (The Country Bears‘ Eli Marienthal, still interacting with animatronic performers). Sleep all day, party all night, never grow old, never die: it’s fun to be a Disney starlet.
THE DVD
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen arrives on DVD in cohabiting 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and fullscreen presentations, and although the image looks seriously overcompressed at times, the lollipop colours never become unstable and brightly-lit scenes often exhibit astonishing clarity. On one audio track, the film’s obnoxious soundmix has been given the Dolby Digital 5.1 treatment, while on another director Sara (pronounced “Sawra” even outside her native Wales) Sugarman, scribe Gail Parent, and producers Robert Shapiro and Jerry Leider fight to be heard over each other as they informally compile a glossary of filmmaking terms for a presumed audience of captive ‘tweens. Pill, so affecting in Jerry Ciccoritti’s The Life Before This, is merely asked to bask in Lindsay Lohan’s Lindsay Lohan-ness in the tedious video diary “Confessions from the Set” (6 mins.), an obligation passed onto us with the video for Lohan’s tuneless “That Girl.” A deleted fantasy sequence that throws Sugarman’s impractical desire to subvert the Disney formula into sharp relief rounds out the THX-certified platter, not counting optional pre-menu trailers for The Incredibles, The Princess Diaries Special Edition, Ella Enchanted, and The Young Black Stallion. The keepcase, for what it’s worth, is overflowing with coupons and various graphical ephemera, including a flyer encouraging a read of the Dyan Sheldon novel on which Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is based.
- Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
100 minutes; PG; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French DD 2.0 (Stereo), Spanish DD 2.0 (Stereo); CC; English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; MGM - The Cheetah Girls
93 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1; CC; DVD-5; Region One; Disney - Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
90 minutes; PG; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1; CC; French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Disney
