In theaters

AGENT CODY BANKS 2: DESTINATION LONDON, Directed by Kevin Allen, written by Don Rhymer, 93 minutes, rated PG.

Hot on the heels of the Spy Kids movies and its own predecessor, “Agent Cody Banks,” comes “Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London,” which quickly goes south and drowns in its own flop sweat. The movie is so lame, it leaves you dumbstruck, so come prepared to strike back.

As directed by Kevin Allen from a script by Don Rhymer, “Destination London” arrives only a year after the original movie hit theaters, so you can imagine the time and the care that went into its production.

Some will argue that because it’s for kids, it doesn’t matter that its script is the pits, that the acting is third-rate, and that it’s filled with enough ethnic stereotypes to make you question the filmmakers’ own prejudices. But that’s the conventional wisdom behind these sorts of movies: As long as they keep kids in their seats, then they must be entertaining, so that’s good enough.

Well, it isn’t.

In the movie, Frankie Muniz returns as Cody Banks, a junior CIA operative sent to London to thwart the evil Diaz (Keith Allen) from using a mind-control device that will allow him to put the screws to the world by commanding world leaders.

Posing as a clarinetist player at a posh music school, Cody, who can’t play the clarinet (nyuck-nyuck), goes about his secretive business with the help of Derek (Anthony Anderson), a bumbling black stereotype whose grinning idiocy is such a grotesque throwback, you’d think he was starring in a minstrel show.

Sandwiched between this and the film’s flotilla of flatulent jokes are a handful of subplots, one of which involves Cody’s flirtation with a dull British spy named Emily (Hannah Spearritt), but none of which give the movie the energy it needs.

The first “Cody Banks” was hardly a smash, but it still was rather good. Buoyed by some clever writing, a gung-ho performance by the likable Muniz, and a credible script that kept the action moving, the movie was a B-level complement to Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids series, which remains the high point in the kid-cum-James-Bond genre.

Rodriguez’s insights into childhood, sibling rivalry and his forward-thinking grasp on technology make his movies fresh, inventive and alive. They have style, they don’t condescend, they have a healthy respect for diversity and they’re fun. All of those qualities kids appreciate – and all of them are conspicuously missing from the sloppy piece of ho-hum junk that is “Destination London.”

Grade: D

On video and DVD

21 GRAMS, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, written by Guillermo Arriago, 125 minutes, rated R.

The title of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “21 Grams” doesn’t refer to drugs, though they certainly enter the picture. Instead, it refers to the amount of weight a body allegedly loses at the exact moment of death.

Is it the weight of the soul that steals away those 21 grams? Or is it the more scientific expelling of human waste? As directed by the Mexican-born Inarritu from a script by novelist Guillermo Arriago, the movie skirts an answer, though it does lean toward the more cosmic and spiritual of possibilities.

As in the director’s previous film, “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams” connects three seemingly unrelated stories around the ramifications of one horrific car accident.

And yet it’s no rehash.

Complex and powerful, haunting and masterful, the movie shatters chronological time and leaves audiences to piece together the story. What’s achieved here is a new kind of mystery, with Stephen Mirrione’s masterful editing standing as a major reason it succeeds as well as it does.

Without giving too much away, the movie stars Sean Penn as the dying Paul Rivers, a 41-year-old mathematician in the last stages of heart disease whose wife, Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg), wants to be artificially inseminated with his sperm so she can bear his child. Because Paul no longer loves her, he’s reluctant to follow through, which drives a wedge between them.

Juxtaposed against this is Benicio Del Toro as Jack Jordan, an ex-con struggling with his faith after he accidentally runs down the husband and two daughters of Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts), a suburban woman so destroyed by her loss, she turns to cocaine and alcohol in an effort to smother what she knows she doesn’t have the courage to feel.

Mirroring life, Inarritu’s movie keeps you just off balance, just out of reach of the truth until it can slam you with it, and leave you stunned by it. He wants you to live this movie, and as such, his film has its arch moments of melodrama, not unlike the sort you’d find in a Pedro Almodovar movie, but without the humor. The actors, especially Watts, tap into something deeper here, exposing emotions normally unleashed in private. What’s created here is almost unbearably intimate, a movie that nudges open a door of grieving and allows us to stand just outside of it, where we’re allowed to look inside and watch.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

American Splendor ? A-

Anything Else ? B+

Bad Boys II ? C-

Bruce Almighty ? B+

Cold Creek Manor ? D

Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat ? D-

Duplex ? B

The Fighting Temptations ? C

Finding Nemo ? B+

Freaky Friday ? A-

Good Boy! ? C+

How to Deal ? C-

House of the Dead ? D

Intolerable Cruelty ? B-

Le Divorce ? C-

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ? A-

Lost in Translation ? A

Looney Tunes: Back in Action ? B-

Man on the Train ? A-

Matchstick Men ? A-

The Matrix Reloaded ? A-

The Missing ? B+

Mona Lisa Smile ? B-

My Boss’s Daughter ? BOMB

Once Upon a Time in Mexico ? B-

Open Range ? B+

Pieces of April ? B

Pirates of the Caribbean ? A-

Runaway Jury ? B

Schindler’s List-10th Anniversary ? A+

School of Rock ? B+

Veronica Guerin ? B