This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012)

Spy Kids is a 2001 American science fiction family film. It is the first film of the Spy Kids series. It is directed and written by Robert Rodriguez. It stars Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara. Rodriguez also produced with Elizabeth Avellan and Guillermo Navarro and was the editor of the film. The film was released in United States theaters on March 30, 2001 and on VHS and DVD on September 28, 2001.

Plot[link]

Carmen and Juni Cortez live with their parents, Ingrid and Gregorio, who they believe are boring, unaware that their parents are actually semi-retired international spies, working for an organization called the OSS (Organization of Super Spies, a reference to the Office of Strategic Services). Originally, Ingrid and Gregorio were enemies until they fell in love and got married. They retired to some degree when they had their children.

At the beginning of the film, Carmen's main concern in life is with the unwelcome responsibility of babysitting her brother, Juni, and therefore she is usually mean to him. However, underneath her abusive exterior, Carmen is hiding secrets of her own: she skips school, and has to wear diapers at night due to having problems with bedwetting. She is desperate to keep both of these problems secret, especially from her brother. Juni lacks self-esteem and is a fan of a children's television show called "Floop's Fooglies." Hosted by Fegan Floop and co-starring the Fooglies—colorful, mutant, gibberish speaking friends of Floop—the show proves to be an irritant to Gregorio, who openly displays his dislike for the program. When he suspects the show is involved in the disappearance of several fellow spies, Ingrid and Gregorio decide to investigate and leave their children in the care of "Uncle" Felix Gumm, a man not actually their uncle but, rather, a family guardian. Ingrid and Gregorio are captured by Floop's men, the ever idiotic Thumb-Thumbs, robots with thumbs for legs, arms and heads that wear red vests. Carmen and Juni discover the truth about their parents when they find that their parents have been kidnapped.

In Floop's island castle, the entertainer is reluctantly assisting a businessman named Mr. Lisp in creating an army of superstrong robots, using the children of world leaders as a disguise, to conquer the world. The robots were constructed by Floop's servant Alexander Minion. An item named the Third Brain is required to power the robots, or at least give them the ability to speak and think. Ingrid and Gregorio were brought in, due to Gregorio being one of the scientists who created the Third Brain and hid it, although he refuses to give the hiding place. Floop's minions invade the Cortez home, although Carmen and Juni escape while Felix is captured, but not before he tells the children the truth about their parents. The children flee to a safe house where they decide to become spies, until Ms. Gradenko, a fellow spy, arrives to help them. It is revealed that Third Brain is hidden in the house and that Gradenko is in allegiance with Lisp. The children escape but soon encounter robotic clones of themselves who steal the Third Brain and deliver it to Minion, who takes command of the robots and imprisons Floop.

Carmen and Juni locate Gregorio's estranged older brother and inventor, Machete, who harbors bitter feelings against his younger brother, similar to the feelings Carmen harbored toward Juni; Machete was apparently forced to watch over Gregorio and left him because of this. He refuses to help the children because of this. With no support from their uncle, the children sneak away to rescue their parents on their own, stealing a map of Floop's castle and a spy plane to get them there. Their sibling rivalry comes to a head, however, when Carmen's continuing criticisms and name-calling pushes Juni to retaliate by calling her "diaper lady," starting a quarrel that almost crashes the plane. As they work together to safely land the craft, Juni reveals that he had always been aware of Carmen's nighttime bedwetting, but kept that knowledge to himself at their mother's insistence. Having come to an understanding of each other as brother and sister, their relationship begins to improve from this point on.

The two make it to the castle and search for their parents. Juni finds Floop and frees him, convincing him to help them and explaining what was missing from his TV show- children. Carmen, Juni and Floop free Ingrid and Gregorio and then confront Minion, trapping him in a machine that creates the Fooglies on the children's show (who are actually the missing agents). Minion deliberately starts the machine but escapes before he becomes a Fooglie, altering his appearance with three extra heads and combined hands with multiple fingers. The spies confront Gradenko, Minion and Lisp and are attacked by their 500-man army of child robots. Machete arrives to help, later on claiming he came back for the same reason he left, meaning that he was told to watch over his brother. Floop rewrites the children's minds to make them act like children (as Minion says to Lisp, "They have minds of their own now, sir; anything we tell them to do goes in one ear and out the other!"), saving the Cortez family and causing the children to play with Gradenko, Minion and Lisp, tossing them around in the air. Gregorio and Machete reform their brotherly relationship, with both of them claiming neither of them even remembering why Machete left, and Floop redesigns his show with Minion and the robotic Carmen and Juni as his new characters. The leader of the OSS, Devlin, offers the Cortez children jobs as spies, to which Carmen responds that the spywork is easy, while keeping their Cortez family together is the hardest mission of all. Having adopted a stronger value of family unity, she demands that they be allowed to work together as a family.

Cast[link]

• Alexa Vega as Carmen Cortez The main protagonist
• Daryl Sabara as Juni Cortez The other main protagonist
• Carla Gugino as Ingrid Cortez
• Antonio Banderas as Gregorio Cortez
• Danny Trejo as Isador "Machete" Cortez
• Cheech Marin as Felix Gumm
• Teri Hatcher as Ms. Gradenko
• Alan Cumming as Fegan Floop
• Tony Shalhoub as Alexander Minion
• Robert Patrick as Lisp
• George Clooney as Devlin
• Mike Judge as Donnagon Giggles / Donnamight
• Shannon Shea as Flower, one of Floop's Fooglies
• Norman Cabrera as Tall and Skinny, Another one of Floop's Fooglies
• Trant Batey as Too Too, Also another one of Floop's Fooglies
• Angela Lanza as Newscaster
• Evan Sabara as "Intruder" Spy Kid
• Joseph Horlock as part of the crowd

Soundtrack[link]

The film score is written by John Debney and Danny Elfman, with contributions from a variety of others, including director Robert Rodriguez and Marcel Rodriguez. Among Elfman's contributions is "Floop's Song (Cruel World)", which is performed by Alan Cumming. Los Lobos covers the Tito Puente song, "Oye Como Va" (adapted as "Oye Como Spy" by David Garza and Robert Rodriguez). The song was nominated for "outstanding song in a motion picture soundtrack" at the 2002 ALMA Awards. The closing theme, "Spy Kids (Save the World)", is performed by the Los Angeles indie pop band, Fonda.^{[citation needed]}

The score won an award at the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards.

Track listing[link]

1. "Cortez Family" (Gavin Greenaway, Heitor Teixeira Pereira, Harry Gregson-Williams) – 1:39
2. "My Parents Are Spies" (Danny Elfman) – 2:09
3. "Spy Wedding" (Los Lobos, Robert Rodriguez) – 2:11
4. "Spy Kids Demonstration" (John Debney, Robert Rodriguez, Marcel Rodriguez) – 1:06
5. "Parents on Mission" (John Debney, Danny Elfman, Gavin Greenaway, Heitor Teixeira Pereira) – 1:17
6. "Kids Escape House" (Gavin Greenaway, Heitor Teixeira Pereira) – 3:14
7. "Pod Chase" (John Debney, Danny Elfman, Harry Gregson-Williams) – 1:38
8. "The Safehouse" (John Debney, Danny Elfman) – 0:47
9. "The Third Brain" (John Debney, Robert Rodriguez, Marcel Rodriguez) – 1:00
10. "Buddy Pack Escape" (Danny Elfman) – 1:39
11. "Oye Como Spy" (Davíd Garza, Tito Puente, Robert Rodriguez) – 2:59
    • Performed by Los Lobos
12. "Floop's Song (Cruel World)" (Danny Elfman) – 0:59
    • Performed by Alan Cumming
13. "Spy Go Round" (Gavin Greenaway, Heitor Teixeira Pereira, Marcel Rodriguez) – 2:11
14. "Minion" (Chris Boardman, Gavin Greenaway, Heitor Teixeira Pereira, Robert Rodriguez) – 1:03
15. "Sneaking Around Machetes" (Danny Elfman) – 0:35
16. "The Spy Plane" (John Debney, Danny Elfman) – 1:29
17. "Floop's Castle" (Chris Boardman) – 1:29
18. "Final Family Theme" (Harry Gregson-Williams) – 1:44
19. "Spy Kids (Save the World)" (Emily Cook, David Klotz and Dave Newton^{[disambiguation needed ]}) – 2:20
    • Performed by Fonda

Release and reception[link]

The film received positive critics upon release, with an approval rating of 93% percent and an average rating of 7.2 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes.^[2].It has a score of 71 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 27 reviews indicating "Generally favorable reviews".^[3]. It has a worldwide gross of $147,934,180.^[4]

A special edition with deleted scenes was released to theaters on August 8, 2001. It also was released with Kellogg's products. There were plans to release the special edition to DVD but it never materialized, despite the fact that a director's commentary and interviews were already recorded for it.^[5]

Accolades[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Spy Kids at AllRovi
• Spy Kids at the Internet Movie Database

Tony Shalhoub
Tony Shalhoub (December 2008)
Born	Anthony Marcus Shalhoub (1953-10-09) October 9, 1953 (age 58) Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.
Residence	Los Angeles, California, Green Bay, Wisconsin
Education	University of Southern Maine
Alma mater	Yale School of Drama
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1986–present
Home town	Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.
Television	Monk, Wings
Spouse	Brooke Adams (m. 1992) «start: (1992)»"Marriage: Brooke Adams to Tony Shalhoub" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Tony_Shalhoub)
Children	2
Awards	Emmy Award, Golden Globe
Signature

Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub (born October 9, 1953) is an American actor. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci in Wings and sleuth Adrian Monk in the TV series Monk. He has won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work in Monk. He has also had a successful career as a character actor, with roles in films like Spy Kids, Men in Black, Men in Black II, Thirteen Ghosts, Galaxy Quest, 1408, Barton Fink, Big Night, The Siege, Cars (film) and The Man Who Wasn't There.

Early life[link]

Shalhoub was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father, Joe Shalhoub, a Catholic Maronite from Lebanon, immigrated to the United States as an orphan at the age of 10. He married Shalhoub’s mother, Helen, a second-generation Lebanese-American, and founded a family grocery chain, starting with a store in downtown Green Bay.

Being the second youngest of the couple's 10 children, Shalhoub was introduced to the theater by an older sister, who put his name forward to be an extra in a high school production of The King and I. Despite finding himself standing on the wrong side of the curtain during the final dress rehearsal, he became enamored with the theater. Shalhoub graduated from Green Bay East High School, where his senior peers named him the best dressed and most likely to succeed.^{[citation needed]} In his senior year he suffered a setback, breaking his leg in a fall off the stage into the pit during a rehearsal. Recovering quickly, he was able to perform in the school's final play of the year. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in drama from the University of Southern Maine in Portland, going on to earn a master's from the Yale School of Drama in 1980.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

Stage[link]

Shortly thereafter, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he spent four seasons with the American Repertory Theater before heading to New York City, where he found work waiting tables while honing his craft and auditioning. He made his Broadway debut in the 1985 Rita Moreno/Sally Struthers production of The Odd Couple and was nominated for a 1992 Tony Award for his featured role in Conversations with My Father. Shalhoub met his wife, actress Brooke Adams, when they co-starred on Broadway in The Heidi Chronicles. His off-Broadway credits include Waiting for Godot, For Dear Life, Rameau's Nephew, Zero Positive, and two productions of Shakespeare in the Park: Henry IV, Part 1 and Richard II.^{[citation needed]}

Shalhoub returned in December 2006 to the Second Stage Theatre in New York, off-Broadway, opposite Patricia Heaton for a run of The Scene by Theresa Rebeck.^[1] In 2010, he went to Broadway to act as Saunders in a revival version of Lend Me a Tenor in New York at the Music Box Theatre.^{[2][dated info]}

Screen roles[link]

One of his first television roles was in 1991 as the Italian cabdriver Antonio Scarpacci in the sitcom Wings. Shalhoub was pleasantly surprised to land the role after having a recurring role in the second season. Shalhoub affected an Italian accent for the role. In the same time period, Shalhoub played physicist Dr. Chester Ray Banton in The X-Files second-season episode "Soft Light".

Shalhoub's film roles following his Wings breakout included an excitable producer in Barton Fink and a fast-talking lawyer in The Man Who Wasn't There (both directed by the Coen brothers), a linguistically unidentified cabby in Quick Change, a Cuban-American businessman in Primary Colors, a sleazy alien pawn shop owner in the Men in Black films, a sympathetic attorney in A Civil Action, a widowed father in Thir13en Ghosts, a cameo role in the film Gattaca, and a has-been television star in Galaxy Quest.

He had a co-starring role in the film Big Night, where he plays an Italian-speaking chef complete with accent. In 1995 he had a role in the hit NBC sitcom Frasier in the episode "The Focus Group" as an Arab newsstand owner named Manu Habbib. He did voice acting for the 1997 computer game Fallout.

Shalhoub demonstrated his dramatic range in the 1998 big-budget thriller The Siege, where he co-starred alongside Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Bruce Willis. His character, FBI Special Agent Frank Haddad, was of Middle Eastern descent and suffered discrimination after terrorist attacks in New York City.^[3] He returned to series television in 1999, this time in a lead role on Stark Raving Mad, opposite Neil Patrick Harris. However, the show didn't attract much of an audience, and NBC canceled the series in July 2000.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Monk

After a two-year absence from the small screen, Shalhoub starred in another TV series, Monk, in which he portrays Adrian Monk, a brilliant Sherlock Holmes-type detective with many compulsions and phobias, for USA Network. Shalhoub was nominated for an Emmy Award^[4] for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in eight consecutive years from 2003 to 2010, winning in 2003, 2005, and 2006. He also took the Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy, in 2003.^[5]

[edit] During Monk

In addition to his acting work, Shalhoub, along with the Network of Arab-American Professionals and Zoom-in-Focus productions, established The Arab-American Filmmaker Award Competition in 2005. Arab-American filmmakers submitted screenplays, with the chosen winner flown to Hollywood to have their screenplay produced. Two runners-up were also invited to participate in the production.^{[citation needed]}

He appeared with Alec Baldwin in the 2004 Hollywood satire The Last Shot as a gruff small-time mobster with a love for movies, and as the voice of Luigi in the 2006 Disney/Pixar film Cars. The same year he appeared in Danny Leiner's drama "The Great New Wonderful" as a psychologist in post-9/11 New York City. The following year, 2007, he appeared in the 2007 horror film 1408 as well on stage off-Broadway as Charlie in The Scene.

He received a 2008 Grammy nomination in the category "Best Spoken Word Album for Children" for his narration of The Cricket in Times Square.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[link]

Shalhoub married actress Brooke Adams in 1992. The two have worked together in several films, and Adams has made several guest appearances on Monk, portraying several different side characters, including a flight attendant, the mother of a kidnapped violinist, a county sheriff, and a crazy cat lady. Shalhoub and Adams appeared on Broadway together in the 2010 revival of Lend Me a Tenor. At the time of their wedding, Adams had an adopted daughter, Josie Lynn (born 1989), whom Shalhoub adopted. In 1994, they adopted another daughter, Sophie (born 1993). The family resides in Los Angeles and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

In 2006, Shalhoub's brother Dan appeared on the reality show American Inventor, pitching the Sha-Poopie, a catch-in-action pooper scooper.^[6] Judges rejected it. It later appeared in the 2009 Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Dog". Shalhoub is the cousin of Chicago radio personality Jonathon Brandmeier. He is also the brother-in-law of former Guiding Light actress Lynne Adams.^[7] His brother Michael Shalhoub is also an actor and made three guest appearances on Monk.

Filmography[link]

Motion pictures[link]

Television[link]

Video games[link]

Produced[link]

Directed[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tony Shalhoub

• Tony Shalhoub at the Internet Movie Database
• Tony Shalhoub at the Internet Broadway Database
• 1st Annual Arab-American Film Maker Award 2005
• Star File: Tony Shalhoub at Broadway.com
• Interview with Tony Shalhoub in Venice Magazine
• Tony Shalhoub at Emmys.com