You'll enjoy watching 'Agent Cody Banks'

Agent Cody Banks

Director: Harald Zwart

Cast: Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon, Ian McShane, Keith David, Martin Donovan

Cert: PG.

The awful thing about this junior spy spoof is that you emerge from the darkness hoping nobody suspects you have enjoyed it.

Muniz, the star of the excellent TV sitcom, Malcolm in the Middle, is our unlikely hero - a 15-year-old recruited and trained by the CIA to tackle the evil Ian McShane, who wants to get his hands on experiments conducted by scientist Martin Donovan (we're not into originality here) - and he makes a fine fist of it, desperately trying to be adult and sophisticated in order to impress the scientist's pretty daughter (Duff, which she most certainly isn't) and then finding the wheels coming off because, hey, he's just a 15-year-old kid!

Where director Zwart succeeds is in keeping the film firmly rooted in as much reality as the screenplay allows and in not going overboard with the spoof elements of the plot. It's all a bit daft, to be sure, but everybody seems to have enjoyed making the film and you'll enjoy watching it.

So successful, indeed, has the film been at the Stateside Box Office that the follow-up is currently being filmed in London. Agent Cody Banks will be with us for a long time

Star Rating: 4/5