Carmen and Juni Cortez have a secret. Their parents (Banderas and Gugino) are international spies, and sometimes they're needed to save the day. This time around, the Cortez siblings meet rival spy kids, the Giggles, and together they head for the Island of Lost Dreams to battle an evil mad scientist. Not the most original basic plot, but this is made up for with the most imaginative story since the first Spy Kids.

There are skeleton warriors, bizarre creatures, and enough spy gizmos to make James Bond jealous. To top that off, we even get Buscemi in mad-scientist mode!

With Spy Kids, Robert Rodriguez, famed for his no-holds-barred action-westerns (El Mariachi, Desperado, and From Dusk Till Dawn) and that horror movie in which Frodo fights the T1000 (The Faculty), surprised even the harshest critics by producing one of the greatest kids' adventure movies of all time. Spy Kids 2 delivers everything the first did, but even bigger and even better. If 'your kids' (also known as the eight-year-old side of you that you only let out in a dark theatre) enjoyed the first Spy Kids then you'll love this one. If you're not familiar with the Spy Kids yet, it's about time you were.

It's Treasure Island in the 30th Century (but whatever: after the 23rd it's all just a blur). Technology is so advanced that it's possible to sail through the galaxy in spaceships ((mdash)) real ships, with masts and sails. Jim Hawkins, in this version, is the kind of whining teen that people of my generation tried to pretend that Luke Skywalker wasn't, but he gets a final chance to make good when he finds a map pinpointing the location of a whole planetful of treasure, and so sets forth with the usual kind of gang: bumbling godfather, acerbic-yet-foxy (literally foxy) captain, nasty mutinous pirates, nice mutinous pirates, etc. Despite the fact that they're all members of different and genuinely weird species, he manages to avoid acquiring a comic relief sidekick until after they find the planet and land.

The film is patchy. Musker and Clements were responsible for some marvellous set pieces in their previous Disney features (The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules), and they're responsible for some spectacular ones here, too, but, while it's enjoyable enough, looks great, and is certainly a vast improvement over Disney's last cartoon in this vein (Atlantis), overall it's neither as exciting nor as funny nor as moving as it's trying to be.