SPY Kids meets James Bond junior in this amiable teen spy movie that arrives with perfect timing: just as the school holidays start and just before Spy Kids 3 clocks in.

Agent Cody Banks is as proficient as its slick young star, Frankie Muniz, the teenager with the strangely adult features from My Dog Skip, Big Fat Liar and Malcolm In The Middle, his TV vehicle shown on BBC2.

Muniz plays the pint-sized Cody Banks, a typical tongue-tied teenager, normal in every girl-shy way except that this boy Bond gets to spend his summer camp at the CIA spy school training to be a mini secret agent. All this boy Bond now needs is his call to save the world.

When his mission comes it requires him to make a ham-fisted move on Natalie (Hilary Duff, from the Disney Channel's Lizzy McGuire show), who just happens to be the hot babe daughter of an absent-minded scientist (Martin Donovan) whose latest deadly invention has been acquired by suave and dastardly Brinkman (a tongue in cheek Ian McShane).

Mad Brinkman's villainous organisation has plans for world domination - and the obligatory mountain-top hideaway - and now boy Bond must save the world, parade all manner of hi-tech stunts, defeat the bad guy and his heavy henchman (Arnold Vosloo), win the girl and conquer his teenage teething problems.

All this is handled with aplomb by the chirpy chipmunk Muniz and directed with popcorn panache by Harald Zwart, with no money spared on the special effects and stunts, as Muniz adds jet-propelled skate boarding and karate to the spy kid repertoire.

It may lack originality, and the awkward-boy-meets-princess schtick borders on the cloying and embarrassing but as a teen fantasy movie, Agent Cody Banks will fulfil wishes until the next big distraction comes along.

Updated: 10:28 Friday, July 25, 2003