Richard Grieco takes on the super-spy genre in this teen action comedy. There are nods to the established tropes of the genre, filled with lots of teen humor.

Grieco is Michael Corben. An almost high school graduate. He’s receives an incomplete. The only impossible way for him to get the missing credits… join the French Club on a trip to Paris. Throw in a case of mistaken identity and young Michael Corben finds himself caught up in a typical Bondian plot.

With Linda Hunt and Roger Rees as the film’s baddies, Ilsa Hunt and Augustus Steranko, you know the film is going to lean into its tropes and expectations.

When Roger Daltrey as a James Bond-like character, Blade, meets his end. Michael Corben (David McIlwraith) is dispatched and dispatched. While our Michael Corben inadvertently steps into his mission and life.

There’s lots of fun, Linda Hunt is a delight. Throw in a cross-section of super spy expectations and teen high school tropes, and the thing pays off pretty well.

Michael finds himself joining Blade’s daughter, Mariska (Gabrielle Anwar) who is on the trail of those who killed her father.

There are odd henchmen, ridiculous gadgets, beautiful women, silly names and casinos. And, of course, as the narrative progresses both his worlds are going to collide as Michael goes after Augustus.

In all fairness, with a slightly better script, better editing, a higher production budget, and slightly better casting (Rees and Hunt steal the picture) this could have been something. In it you see a lot of Bond, but also things that would come down the pipe later like Austin Powers in film, and Alex Rider in novels (not to mention the Young Bond novels).

It actually hits the mark and is pretty entertaining, but it also looks like a could have been. This could have been a lot of fun, if done right, and instead it misses the opportunity to swing for the fences.

The tone slides a bit, here and there, and I think if everything around Grieco had been played super-straight (or as much as it can be in the super-spy genre) and he played a typical 80s/90s teen, this could have been really entertaining.

In fact, throughout Grieco is okay and pretty charming. Anwar, as lovely as she is, doesn’t feel like she’s into the film. Maybe she wasn’t a 007 fan.

Speaking of 007 and tropes, the film needed a better score, sorry David Foster. And there were too many needle drops of completely unrecognizable songs – there was some Kylie Monigue in there. But if the studio had dropped a little more coin and gotten some hit songs, expanded the production in general…

This could have been a wild ride.

Instead, Michael Corben will not return…