Agent Marissa Wilson (Jessica Alba) may be the best spy -- and worst mother -- ever. With one hand on her baby bump, she waddles after helium-voiced villain Tick Tock (Entourage’s Jeremy Piven), whose evil talents include tossing time-stopping electric bombs and torturing his frozen victims with bad time puns. Even when her water breaks, that doesn’t stop her from pursuing her target in a gadget-enchanced car chase, whilst driving distracted by a video chat with her clueless hubby, Wilbur (Community’s Joel McHale). He thinks she’s an interior decorator, and ironically is currently working on a new reality TV “Spy Hunter” series wherein he tries, unsuccessfully, to uncover spies including the one he’s married too.

Marissa captures Tick Tock and makes it to the hospital in time to deliver a brand-new baby girl. But make no mistake, for this spy, and this Spy Kids installment, family comes first, before a crime-fighting career, entertaining your audience … everything. Zip to two years later and Marissa has given up saving the world to devote herself to her family -- including her adorably gassy toddler and her two less-adorable stepchildren, Rebecca and Cecil. Never mind that serial prankster Rebecca lets blue-cheese-dressing bombs do the talking when she’s letting her stepmom know just how much she doesn’t love her. Why does Marissa endure this? Because as the movie says again, and again, and again, in many obvious ways, we are all guilty of "taking time for granted" and not spending enough of it with our loved ones. Is this an exercise in cinematic brainwashing? Or just the failure of director/writer Robert Rodriguez to, like my sister does for my 3-year-old nephew, hide the peas in the pasta?

But perhaps kids won’t mind this mental bludgeoning as much as parents and older siblings forced to tag along. Especially when they’ve got the thrill of 4-D, aka Smellovision -- they can scratch and sniff the scent of candy and farts off a piece of numbered cardboard. It’s safe to say no one’s really mastered Smellovision yet, including Spy Kids 4-D, and its mostly paper-scented paper. Though if your kids love gross-out gags like vomit and poopy diaper bombs, there’s enough scatological humor in this movie to make Judd Apatow jealous.

Agent Wilson’s early retirement doesn’t last long when, with the aid of the escaped Tick Tock, another criminal mastermind, The Time Keeper (who wears a scary clock mask on his head -- scary because it has no breathing holes), activates an Armageddon device capable of speeding up time until it runs out and the world ends. (Because, as we've heard before, we're all guilty of wasting time.) The only thing that can stop the doomsday machine is a sapphire pendant that Marissa gave her stepdaughter, hoping to make her like her. When The Time Keeper’s gang come for the necklace, it’s up to their canine robot comedian Argonaut (a scruffy terrier with an overbite and Ricky Gervais’ voice) to deliver them safely to OSS headquarters, where they meet the original spy kids, all grown up -- Carmen and Juni Cortez (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara).

It’s a long time coming, but eventually because, as the movie tells us, “adults overthink things” Rebecca and Cecil are “activated” with the appropriate gadgets, though they are cautioned that the best spy kids don’t rely on them, and instead use what’s on hand (like the corn chowder you just barfed up).

Sure, it’s all in campy good fun, but somehow it’s like a Batman TV episode without the POW! The low-budget-looking special effects aren’t that special and it’s less of an adventure than a educational cartoon. Though Alba’s pregnant spy or spy with toddler scenes are a rather funny 00MOM mold-breaker, and Piven and Gervais deliver their lines as amusingly as they can, it’s still only enough to entertain young children for about an hour and half. But adults, don’t expect to enjoy it as much as other family films. Kids may smell candy, but you’ll likely mostly smell boredom

Grade: C-