A kiddie heist caper with a heart of gold
These kids aren't superheroes. Their gadgets aren't super-high-tech, and they don't know any martial-arts moves.
If anyone has a corporate identification here, it's the main villain, Brisbane (Michael Des Barres), who raises a toast to "the only success that matters — financial." An adult who comes to the rescue at one point is French. Yes, French. (Somewhere Donald Rumsfeld is choking on his freedom fries.)
Most important, these kids aren't spies for the good guys. They're bank robbers. "Catch That Kid" is a heist film.
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Kristen Stewart ("Panic Room") plays Maddy, a teenager in love with climbing. Her father, Tom (Sam Robards), was once a world-class mountain climber but now runs a small go-cart track near L.A. An ideal movie father, Tom is strong but laid-back, handsome but rumpled. He talks to kids without talking down to them. One imagines him smelling of after-shave lotion despite the scruff on his face.
The mother, Molly (Jennifer Beals), is a free-lance security expert in the process of installing a high-tech security system at a downtown bank. She's working long hours and rarely sees her family, although she and Tom do manage a late-night, impromptu slow-dance by the refrigerator light. It's cut short when Tom collapses. An old mountain-climbing injury. His doctors say he'll never walk again.
Of course they mention an experimental procedure, which, of course, is only available in Denmark, with a prohibitive cost ($250,000). When the bank heartlessly turns them down for a loan, Maddy secretly decides to rob it instead. It's almost a lose-lose proposition — ruin Mom's reputation in order to heal Dad's legs — but at least it explains how she gains access to the bank's security system.
For help she enlists two neighborhood boys — Austin (Corbin Bleu), a computer geek/shutterbug, and Gus (Max Thieriot), a mechanic — both of whom are smitten by her tomboyish ways.
During their adventure, they face the usual bumbling security guards and spout the usual "ordinary kid lines" in extraordinary situations. Entering the bank's sleek inner sanctum, for example, Gus, properly awed, says, "We are so grounded."
Based upon the 2001 Danish film "Klatretøsen" ("Climber Girl"), "Catch That Kid" can be sentimental, at times, and formulaic. Its star, Stewart, doesn't give much — her brow is furrowed throughout — but this makes her all the more intriguing, and you understand why the boys follow her around.
Despite its high concept, director Bart Freundlich ("The Myth of Fingerprints") keeps the film grounded in reality. No rocket-propelled boots ("Spy Kids") or rocket-propelled snowboards ("Cody Banks") for these kids, just a go-cart supercharged by Microsoft's Xbox. It's as close as they get to a corporate identification.
Erik Lundegaard: elundegaard@comcast.net