Agent Cody Banks is so contrived and far-fetched that it could only be a children's movie. Yet the traditional intrigue inherent in the spy movie genre permeates and confuses the plot, consequentially creating a film too advanced for the only audience who could possibly accept the silly plot without even one little question: the audience of infants.

In a very Disney Channel manner, the film is entertaining at first, but then the childish antics, the superficiality, and the overall absurd unrealism start to grate. And then annoy. And then leave you begging in futile hope for it to stop.

Oh, but it doesn't, not for a painfully prolonged, drawn-out 102 minutes. Inauspiciously beginning as any children's TV show, Agent Cody Banks opens in the Banks' ordinary home, as Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz) successfully tackles the role of the world's most absurd child: a junior CIA agent.

Apparently the physically unimposing Banks has been working as an undercover CIA agent for the past two years, ever since attending a seemingly innocuous summer camp in which children are taught to be world class spies. Don't question the believability yet, because it's all downhill from here.

Banks is called in for a new mission: to get close to a renegade scientist's daughter, the cutesy Natalie Connors (Hilary Duff, Disney Channel actress extraordinaire). There's just one problem—he can't talk to girls. Especially not one this "hot." But his humiliating efforts to speak with members of the opposite sex are much more painful than humorous.

Still, he manages, with the help of his bombshell mentor, Veronica Miles (Angie Harmon), straight out of the VIP school of bouncy sex-starved spies. And once he makes his way into Natalie's life, he finds himself—surprise!-- falling for the girl. Unfortunately he blows his cover, she gets captured, and he's pulled off the case. Have no fear, however, this 15-year-old has (apparently) super-human skills and flies unrealistically to the rescue.

And as the plot trudges on through mires of clichés, every CIA scene is an infantile far-fetched fantasy in which security and rules are virtually nonexistent. The reasoning behind Natalie's importance—the fact that her father is mixed up with some very bad men, who are also notably foreign in a semi-racist filth of spy movie typicality— is rarely mentioned and certainly doesn't support the amount of effort the agency invests in her.

There isn't even any redeeming moralistic value to the film. Agent Cody Banks has no defense for the negative values it preaches to children—driving recklessly, lying to parents, and general deception—under the guise of a poor excuse for entertainment. Unless, if you count that in the end the boy that cheated and lied the most wins.

James Bond for kids is a double-oh-zero.