The internet has allowed us to explore worlds beyond ourselves. This has led many scholars and inner-self seekers to wander the web for important answers. Since many inquiries have been satisfied, this leaves the remaining mysteries to scour the globe for answers. Jughead Jones, a scholar from Riverale, has a few. What’s on your mind, Mr. Jones?
Inspiring.
Even more inspiring is Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, released in 2002. I mean… releasing a sequel using “2” in the title in 2002 was a rare opportunity. You know the film, right? No? The first one, maybe? Alexa Vega and her character’s little brother are the offspring of spies, who get kidnapped, so the kids need to save them?
The sequel has the kids in their parents’ headquarters’ youth division, and the kids have rival kids and Grandpa Ricardo Montalban and mix-and-match monsters and an evil spy who wants to use a device on an island to do something and shoe-sniffing.
Break. I watched another Alexa Vega film, “Sleepover,” made in 2004. Totes uninspiring. It has Steve Carell and that guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Goldbergs and a short scene in Community, which reminds me that Brie Larson is in it, which reminds me I have no segue for Jane Lynch.
The plot? Alexa Vega and friends sneak out of the house to do a ton of typical dumb slumber party film stuff, like just missing an authority figure and breaking with a dash of entering. And Jeff Garlin tries to fix a sink. The film cost 10 million to make and, after (astonishingly) breaking even, made less than 150 thousand. It’s poorly rated across the board and has tons of goofs.
But that’s not my question. The video below features two clips, one from Spy Kids 2 and the next from Sleepover.
Why, two years apart, is Alexa Vega sniffing a shoe?
Inspiring.
Yeah, I don’t want to be a tabloid fanatic or yellow journalist. But I wonder if this is a thing Vega requested. The Spy Kids 2 clip makes no sense.
1. The kids find a cave
In the grand scope of things, it makes sense, I guess.
2. Juni thinks to himself, which Carmen hears
This whole thing bugs me. Why aren’t they instinctively speaking? How is it hidden thoughts don’t leak out?
3. Carmen realizes that Juni is thinking, and thinks back to him
“Wait, what… he isn’t talking? Is he… thinking?” should have technically been a line of dialogue. I’d say most, if not all people think out the world in sentences before acting or responding to others.
“So I said to Madge, I said, ‘Madge…'”
Wait, who’s Madge? Is she the tall blonde or… wait, she’s the brunette with back pains. This story again. What an airhead. But I should say something nice. Maybe it’ll offset that pregnant woman I sat on. “Oh, please give Madge my regards!”
4. Carmen tells Juni to talk, but he can’t
If he can’t talk, wouldn’t the words he planned to speak come from his mind?
5. Carmen explains that the cave makes thought and speech reversed from normal audible function
Eh, it’s kind of cool.
6. Carmen asks Juni to think something
Why? Here’s where it derails. If this whole conversation was through thought, then this request is redundant. Chalk it up to the child mentality of “Do it again! Do it again!”
7. Juni tells Carmen her feet stink, which results in Carmen checking to see if it’s true, which it is
I mean… maybe it was for humor purposes, or to further establish the discreet train-wreck of a body that is Carmen Cortez, as Juni reveals in Spy Kids her bed-wetting issue. So maybe it’s a failed attempt as characterization? Thing is that Carmen’s request is too shoehorned, Juni’s response too much a non-sequitur, and the entire cave too much a letdown.
8. The mind-reading stays with them at the end of the film, but it bears no purpose to the actual plot
Exactly the sort of thing that started this inquiry. Maybe the cave is engaging mystery-building, but every other oddity gets some payoff.
9. The kids keep their mind-reading skills into Spy Kids 3, and Alexa Vega, too good to appear until Act III, assures Juni using the phrase “My feet stink.”
This is what piqued my interest. Was the scene so memorable that they needed to reference it in the sequel? Like the vast majority of audiences would get it? No. And frankly, the mind-reading is even worse here, as it’s only used to find Carmen. Is it less shoehorned? A little, but I recall in the Cine-manga adaptation of Spy Kids 2 to have the kids at the end state the mind-reading is phasing out. Probably better that way.
With Sleepover, the shoe-sniff is less inexplicable. She sneaks into her crush’s home and happily sneaks her nose in his sneaker. Creepy, yes, but as far as the film goes, it’s relevant.
Working theory, and I don’t like being all tabloid about it, she’s into it. At least two films in a three-year span featuring Alexa Vega snorting shoes? Or maybe the director of Sleepover liked it in Spy Kids 2? Eh, I’m moving on.
Here’s a quick one.
To the left, Frozen, released November 2013. To the right, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, released March 2014. Both are under Disney, both are properties of or have associations with snow in the title, and both have a scene where a man chides a woman for putting her feet on the dashboard.
A common writer? Maybe someone wanted to discourage putting feet on car dashboards? Probably just a joke, “Oh, men don’t like their cars wrecked! Doh ho ho!” Then why have the joke in both Frozen and Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Why in films with icy titles? Redheads? I’m reading into it way too well or way too much.
Hardly a trend, but put it under “one of those things.”
Two more, and not a comparison. I mean, unless you’re comparing two shows featuring Archie Comics cast members in supernatural elements. I am not. I’m segregating the two shows.
As far as Archie shows without Sabrina the Teenage Witch go, “Archie’s Weird Mysteries” was pretty fun. A nice Reggie robot? Fred and Archie Andrews dancing in kilts to ward off a giant monster? Veronica turning everyone on Earth into her? YES YES YES.
But we have a more mundane plot but fun for a certain demographic: Veronica becomes a giant.
Bored yet? Man, it gets duller. See, Veronica is enlarged through Dilton’s growth ray, and, yawn, it only makes living things grow.
Yes, I know that the best part for most is Veronica losing her clothing both on her way up and down, but I always loved how, during the pool party growth scene, the camera pans across the excited looks of the boys (and one girl) and Betty’s disdain.
But something is nagging at me… right by my ear… I can’t…
OH YES.
More of an animation error than a mystery, but within their universe no one calls it out. The ray that made Veronica grow is only successful on living things. The show, not copping out with a rule that seems to purposely put Veronica in this position, had her improvise and find giant cloth or what have you.
But… she’s wearing earrings. The. Whole. Time.
Chalk it up to recurring character models, so the animators left her earrings in. But let’s have fun here. Is it possible her earrings are… alive? Imagine, dangling from Veronica Lodge’s ears your whole life. Dangle. Dangle. Dangle.
Finally, Sabrina the Animated Series. Not a great show. Sabrina is a preteen played by Melissa Joan Hart’s sister (nice touch). The only mortals to know of her witchery are her “Uncle” Quigley and her best friend, Chloe, played by Cree Summer. It does have a lot of great moments, like when Sabrina switches her life with her rich enemy’s, a Beatles parody (with special guest Weird Al Yankovic!), and when Sabrina and Harvey get stuck in his comic.
Overall, the series had clumsy animation and I felt it was too schmaltzy at times (a lesson of the week theme played up), but it was way better than the sequel, where they use wands instead of their fingers, and no Cree Summer.
There were mistakes, like casting a spell on Gem for a weight spell, resulting in a different outfit for the rest of the episode, or the wrong voice-body combination. So why focus on one error over the others? It ties into the Veronica thing thematically.
Here, we see Sabrina and Chloe in the Waif Moth look. Kate Moss. Ah. Not, they correctly do not wear socks and sandals, a serious faux pas.
Yet here, they hop around in giant gym socks. Gotcha! The photo above is after they shrank to fit into their outfits. They’re wearing doll clothes, but it’s literally the same outfit.
So why do Sabrina and Chloe keep socks in their pants? I mean, that’s my only theory. Oh, they could also have been born into existence to protect the two from indecent exposure. Way clumsier than earrings, guys.
Well, that’s all for now, cats and retractable spoons. But I’ve got more on my mind, and I’ll catch you then.
The Conjecture of a Benjy's Lecture 