The Double O Kid Reviews

THE DOUBLE O KID is a lame youth-appeal spoof of the James Bond genre, with overripe teen idol Corey Haim as the hero, a CIA office boy in Philadelphia named Lance Elliot. Lance's stated age is 17, but that's about seven in dumb-movie years, and the overgrown post-adolescent constantly pretends that he's a secret super agent code-named "Eagle Dawn." The young daydreamer tastes real intrigue when his boss dispatches him as a courier to Los Angeles, an obscure bit of plotting that puts him into the thick of a scheme by a consortium of the usual evil businessmen to destroy a planeful of environmentalists. To this end, the capitalists contact the nefarious nerd Cashpot (Wallace Shawn), a master of custom-designed computer viruses; he's supposed to concoct an electronic bug to make the flight crash in the Bermuda Triangle. For that, the villain needs a vital access card that's been passed on to Lance. Chases follow. The centerpiece of the drama is Cashpot's game room, where prisoners are trapped playing video games that become real (a cut-rate movie conception of virtual-reality technology) and left to their doom. Locked in, Lance manages to turn Cashpot's software virus against him. Jay Johnson contributes some okay computer graphics special effects, especially to the opening titles, but the actors fight a losing battle, not against video games but a banal script and a repetitive movie score that just parrots John Barry's 007 theme over and over again. Actor/playwright Shawn (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE) leads a supporting cast of talented character performers gone to waste. Brigitte Nielsen, as Cashpot's amazonian partner, looks particularly dispirited. Girl-watchers might presume that her presence plus that of sexy ingenue Nicole Eggert translates into steamy thrills, but it's not so--the former even remains fully-dressed while relaxing in a hot tub. The only stimulation in THE DOUBLE O KID is the viewer's momentary shock at the sight of Haim's carrot-colored feather-duster of a hairstyle. (Profanity, violence.)