Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London

An endurance test masquerading as a movie, Agent Cody Banks: Destination London is the sequel to the moderately successful, Agent Cody Banks, a couple of years ago. Essentially a vaguely comedic James Bond for younger teenagers, the plot is pretty much secondary to the supposed star pulling power of young Muinz, the young star of TV's Malcolm in the Middle. This time around, Cody gets dispatched to London by his CIA boss (Keith David) in a bid to halt the nefarious Diaz (Keith Allen). Once a mentor to Cody, Diaz has become a danger as he has joined up with a British aristocrat Lord Kenworth (James Faulkner) in a bid for - yes, you've guessed it! - world domination. As Cody is only in his teens, his only means of getting to Kenworth is by posing as a member of a youth orchestra who are guests of Lord Kenworth's wife (Anna Chancellor). Throw in some silly shenanigans with flute-playing young lady (steady on!) and a bumbling CIA contact (Anthony Anderson) and that's pretty much Agent Banks: Destination London in a nutshell.

Still with me? If that sounds like a winning cinematic experience, there's very little point in reading the rest of this review. For this is not the sort of material which can be classified as something that has a cross border appeal. Just as in the original, Muinz's charisma simply isn't enough to carry the whole thing and he's left horribly exposed throughout. There's a distinct lack of dimension to the film, and the humour is borderline offensive - innuendo laden puns about the size of instruments rule - while Anderson's character is a walking and talking Amos and Andy stereotype. Director Keith Allen does everything with a relentless energy, but there's little sense of vision to his work, and he randomly assembles the overplayed scenes with little sense of style or purpose.