Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids was a major success. The film was a box office hit, making $197 million worldwide on a budget of only $35 million, bringing in 57 percent of the box office share when it hit in March 2001. After critics saw the film, they flocked to give it rave reviews, earning it a critic score of 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. However, all that praise didn't stop fans from panning it, giving it 46 percent on the other end of the Tomatometer.
To understand why there is such a divide with the film, it's important to start with Rodriguez. He is likely the reason for the film's critical love, audience disappointment and the fact that it was a big enough success to warrant sequels. Rodriguez got his start in filmmaking by making a low-budget action movie called El Mariachi, which only cost him $7,000 to make and brought in over $2 million worldwide. After making a studio film in The Faculty, he built a production facility at his home in Texas where he made most of his films, keeping his production costs strikingly low.
As a result, Rodriguez could make a movie, and it would almost always bring in profit. Even a risky grindhouse film like Machete made three-times its production budget at the box office. Rodriguez proved he could make most of the special effects in-house and was able to keep the budget low. Spy Kids was a financial success, making the studio money and ensuring more movies would be in the cards. However, the story didn't connect with the director's dedicated fanbase.
Spy Kids tells the story of two spies (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) who are both captured in front of their children. With their parents gone, Carmen (Alex Vega) and Junie (Daryl Sabara) discovered what their family did for a living and set out to save them with help from gizmos supplied by Uncle Felix (Cheech Marin).
When the movie came out, Rodriguez was known for his very adult-oriented action movies. Coming off El Mariachi, he made a sequel in Desperado before making the vampire movie From Dusk Till Dawn. From there, fans were ready for his next Mariachi film, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, but first, Rodriguez had something completely different in mind. He wanted to make a film his kids could watch, something he hadn't accomplished yet. That movie was Spy Kids, and while it was a great family-friendly movie, it was not what fans had come to expect from Rodriguez.
Spy Kids tells the story of two spies (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) who are both captured in front of their children. With their parents gone, Carmen (Alex Vega) and Junie (Daryl Sabara) discovered what their family did for a living and set out to save them with help from gizmos supplied by Uncle Felix (Cheech Marin). The movie was family-friendly and offered a story that was welcoming to everyone -- well, except maybe fans of hardcore horror.
With Rodriguez making something for everyone, his loyal adult fanbase felt as if they were being neglected in favor of people who hadn't been a fan of the director previously. The audience reviews of Spy Kids on Rotten Tomatoes used words like "dull," "stupid," "pandering," "overrated" and "unrealistic," with most of the people who critiqued it saying it would only entertain kids.
What they didn't understand was that was the point. Rodriguez made a movie that kids would like, and it just so happened that, at the time, critics understood that. Roger Ebert even gave Spy Kids 3.5 stars, calling it "giddy with the joy of its invention." Every Top Critic at Rotten Tomatoes but two gave it a fresh score. The two who didn't like it still complimented its action and look, but lowered the scores because it felt too "ordinary" -- still a far cry from "pandering."
At the end of the day, Robert Rodriguez made a movie that was for kids and filled it full of things that only someone with a child's soul could invent. There was a Spy Pod that looked like a big round fish and giant robots shaped like thumbs. Even if it was only a movie that kids could love, there is nothing wrong to have something filled this much wonder. Fortunately, critics understood Spy Kids at the time, even if the general audience didn't get the allure.