DVD Reviews

Agent Cody Banks

In a film that tries to be part Austin Powers and part James Bond Agent Cody Banks achieves neither. It lies in a realm where great potential crashed into a wall of MTV based mediocrity. The music soundtrack is great, the idea has premise and the cast was a good selection. But the deciding factor of whether it wanted to be bathroom humor stupid or down right solid is only worsened by rough direction and rather badly done CGI effects.

Picture quality seems variable and never consistent. An overall soft picture gets just plain grainy a times. You always know when a CG special effects shot is coming up just by the grain of the film. Contrast level also varies creating an uneven black level. It just seems a bit sloppy for MGM. Oh well, there's always the "Special Edition" next year…

Soundtrack makes up for the weak picture. Dialogue is clear and defined, surrounds track the action nicely and low-level effects hits a great bottom end. Musical accompaniment is on the mark but unfortunately wasted on the film.

A nicely animated main menu has animated transitions to the secondary menus. The main menu design alone gave me hope the movie might actually be good. Note: Extras are accessed on the standard screen side of the disc. The Director's Diary is the most enjoyable of the selection, nice presentation method. "Frankie Muntz Going Big" has an interesting look at the making skateboard car chase. The rest are quickly forgettable, badly assembled tidbits. The commentary offers an enjoyable banter of the Director's technical overview and the stars teasing each other about what took place behind the scenes. You can kind of tell the three are all a little nervous at first but once they get going, it provides a fun chemistry.

There are some enjoyable sequences about the film, which mainly fall to Cody’s one-liner little brother and some of the interaction between Cody and his "handler", Natalie. But every moment meant to be funny gets ruined by a bad CGI generated action sequence or the rather painful over-acting of some cast members (especially the CIA director, what was that all about?). Worth a look and the kids might like it but they'll forget it just as fast.

Review By Joey Chill