There is a reason why James Bond is not 14 years old: All of his "adult activities" give Bond a certain seriousness of purpose. Who cares that he has to save the world from a giant laser (in space!) or from a group of female flying aces determined to rob Fort Knox? He drinks martinis and drives Aston Martins - he's not a cartoon.
It's a shame that the same can't be said for Alex Rider, the titular adolescent MI6 agent of the outrageously titled "Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker." Where Bond mainly passes for camp - come on, a butler with a razor blade in his hat? - Rider is over-exaggerated and cartoonish. It is as if director Geoffrey Sax felt the need to create a live-action comic book for the movie's PG audience. But not a live-action comic book like the nervy "Sin City"-style live-action comic book - more like a live-action kid's cartoon.
The parentless Alex Rider, played by the charismatic Alex Pettyfer, has been raised by his Uncle Ian, who is always away on "boring" business. Uncle Ian, however, is played by Ewan McGregor, so the audience automatically knows two things about him: 1) His business is not going to be boring, because Ewan McGregor drives motorcycles, and 2) because it's Ewan McGregor, he's probably not going to live to see the opening credits.
Both assumptions are correct. Ian is secretly a member of MI6 (portrayed here as a kind of British CIA on Pixy Stix), and he is assassinated after an operation. Only then is Alex informed that his uncle had been secretly training his young nephew for a life in espionage. (So next time your "boring" uncle takes you on a spelunking trip to Peru, remember, he's probably training you to be a government-subsidized killing machine.)
Alex's new boss (Bill Nighy, with his "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" Davy Jones facial ticks intact) informs the reluctant mop-topped teen that if he refuses to drop out of school and become the next Cody Banks, the British government will deport Alex's American nanny, Jack (Alicia Silverstone). Try to imagine Cher from "Clueless" (1995) losing all her father's money and becoming a housekeeper, and you'll start to understand why Alex would be better off without this klutzy woman as his caregiver. What follows is a training montage set to music by the Gorillaz and a lot of angst, glares, etc.
Alex's first operation is to investigate a philanthropic multibillionaire computer genius named Darrius Sayle (Mickey Rourke). "We don't trust him," states Nighy.
Why not? Let's start with the fact that he's Mickey Rourke and looks like a Bond villain's orange caricature, complete with blue eye shadow. Sayle wants to donate models of his incredibly powerful Stormbreaker computer to every school in England, a machine that combines all the awesomeness of an iPod with all the novelty of a '50s-era computer that takes up an entire room.
When Alex gets inside Sayle's massive headquarters under the guise of being a magazine contest winner, the exaggeratedly evil Sayle practically introduces the kid to his pool full of sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads. Alex must find out what Sayle's true intentions are before the Prime Minister (Robbie Coltrane, best known as Hagrid of "Harry Potter" fame!) presses a button that activates every Stormbreaker machine in the country. Because Sayle likely killed Ewan McGregor, this is not just national - it's personal. It's not giving away the ending to say that the world doesn't explode.
The impressiveness of the cast belies the quality of this movie. In addition to Mr. McGregor, Mr. Nighy, Ms. Silverstone, Mr. Rourke, and Mr. Coltrane, the movie trots out Stephen Fry, Sophie Okonedo (an Oscar nominee for 2004's "Hotel Rwanda"), Missi Pyle and Andy Serkis, who collectively play everything from a cleverly created "Q" gadget guy working in a toy store (Fry) to a former circus performer with a permanent grin (Gollum - er, Serkis). Pettyfer is a find as Alex; in due time, he could fill Daniel Craig's tuxedo as another blond Bond. The kid delivers even the hammiest of one-liners with stone-cold cool.
It's a pity that Pettyfer's panache doesn't permeate the rest of the film. The spy flick manages to be neither cool nor fun. Even the action sequences fall flat, because they're so terribly noisy. A typical sequence has Alex chasing a car on a bike, then jumping over stuff, and finally beating up a bunch of guys who are surrounding him, all for no apparent reason.
Herein lies the problem with this movie: There seems to be no reason for any of Alex's misadventures. The best spy films make themselves urgent, but this one just makes itself comically outrageous.
Screenwriter Anthony Horowitz adapted the screenplay from his own popular British book series for children. While the plot and characters seem like they would be wonderful on the page, adapting them for the screen invites inevitable comparisons to every celluloid spy from Jason Bourne to Johnny English. If Alex is to face off with those international men of mystery, maybe he should spend a few more years in training.
