Critics Of "Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams"
Richard Roeper
Ebert & Roeper
August 12, 2002
I didn't like the first one enough to recommend it. I liked this one even less.
KJ Doughton
Film Threat
December 06, 2005
The best example in recent memory of what happens when an independent-minded director is allowed to exercise his talents with the backing and support of a Hollywood support system.
R. L. Shaffer
IGN DVD
January 29, 2012
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams is certainly trippy and inventive, but the film is way too long, a little too flat and not nearly as enjoyable as the original.
Rodriguez seems to have forgotten that making a spectacle is not the same thing as creating a sense of wonder.
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
May 26, 2006
Following up his enormous hit from last year, writer-director Robert Rodriguez does the impossible -- he makes a big Hollywood sequel into a personal pet project.
Given the appeal of his first movie, Rodriguez had a big act to follow. Spy Kids ' progeny, though slightly lacking in the warmth of the first, should no doubt please audiences.
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
August 09, 2002
With Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams, the Spy Kids franchise establishes itself as a durable part of the movie landscape: a James Bond series for kids.
How fitting that the subtitle of this sequel is Island of Lost Dreams, for Rodriguez has let his vivid imagination run even more amok in waking, cinematic life.
Rodriguez seems to be trying too hard to cram in too much - more gadgets, more characters, more noise, more color. But bigger, brighter and faster isn't necessarily better.