The Island of Lost Dreams

Newspaper reviewers don’t seem to like this film as much as they liked the original. “Just an attempt to get a sequel out as quickly as possible,” they say, “without the originality of the first film and with too much reliance on high-tech gadgetry.”

Well, some of that may be true, but it doesn’t detract from the film, in my opinion. In the first film, young Carmen Cortez (Alexa Vega) and her little brother Juni (Daryl Sabara) discovered that their parents Gregorio (Antonio Banderas) and Ingrid (Carla Gugino) were secret agents, and are initiated into the world of international espionage. Here, they are discovering its ins-and-outs, the problems and professional jealousies involved. While rescuing the president’s daughter Alexandra (Taylor Momsen) in the world’s niftiest amusement park, the Cortez kids are upstaged by the Giggles kids (Matthew O’Leary and Emily Osment, sister of Haley Joel); and then, to make matters worse, father Donnagon Giggles (Mike Judge) is given directorship of the OSS over the head of Gregorio, and Juni, because of a lie by Gary Giggles, is fired. However, Carmen and Juni maneuver themselves into tracking down a missing piece of high tech on an invisible island off the coast of Madagascar, where a scientist named Romero (Steve Buscemi) has created a bunch of highly intelligent hybrid animals while, at the same time, damping out all high-tech in the region.

There are cameo appearances by several of the characters from the first movie, including TV star Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming) and a totally reformed (though not physically) Alexander Minion (Tony Shalhoub). We are also introduced to Ingrid’s parents, Taylor Holland and a wheelchair-bound Ricardo Montalban (looking better than he did in the twenty-year-old Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan — the make-up people in at least one of the two movies have to have been working overtime), neither of whom can admit that Gregorio might be good enough for their daughter.

Great fun. And if you go see it at the cinema, maybe there will be a third film. Though Carmen looks to be getting a little old for her part.