Maddy (Kristen Stewart, Panic Room), a twelve-year-old femme fatale in training is faced with a crisis: her Father (Sam Robards), an ex-mountaineer and now go-cart track proprietor, whom she adores, is suddenly paralyzed with a spinal injury resulting from an earlier near-fatal climbing accident. The only hope to save Dad is an experimental procedure that's well beyond the financial means of the family. Thus Maddy rationalizes the following misdeeds: she swears her exclusive devotion to two different young boys who are both deeply smitten by her. Each of them possess skills that will come in handy in carrying out her plot to break into a bank and steal the $250,000 for her father's surgery, and of course the two youngsters agree to help, because they're in deep smitt.

The questionable moral lessons that this plot relies upon, notwithstanding, Catch That Kid is marginally entertaining - tweens are gonna love this stuff. Much of the dialogue is smart and there are a few moments thrown in for us adults (as the kids commence with the deed director Bart Freundlich throws in a Reservoir Dogs formation slow-mo shot.) Kids will no doubt think this stuff is cool, and even though the plot involves cracking computerized, high-quality security systems, there's no real high-tech gadgetry worked into the story. (I was expecting Spy Kids hyjinx.) Thankfully, the kids rely on their inherent resources to get the job done, thus requiring lesser amounts of belief suspension than the trailer suggests. The kids are successful, because they're good at things kids are good at.(Video games, climbing things, driving go-carts, outsmarting evil, bumbling adults, etc.)

The circumstance that makes the kiddy caper in the least bit plausible is the fact that Maddy's mom (Jennifer Beals), is a bank security specialist, currently installing an impregnable vault and surveillance system in the very bank Maddy intends to rob. Of course the robbery business is made all the more palatable by the fact that the dastardly bank president (Michael Des Barres) callously denies her a request for a loan to finance the surgery.

Strangely the scenes of preparation for the heist, move along at a smarter clip than the actual robbery, and Freundlich keeps the whole affair light and fun. By the same token, because of this you never really feel any sense of actual danger, or suspense - you never really get the sense that they're doing anything more risky than toilet-papering the Principal's house. As far as the cast is concerned, the kids do more than steel cash, they steel the show. Stewart is very convincing, and her two moon-eyed accomplices Max Thieriot and Corbin Bleu really do shine.

As expected, in the end the film condemns the crime that it spent 90 minutes promoting, but not nearly enough to keep kids from thinking crime is cool. When I was 10 years old a little film called Oliver won the Oscar and my friends and I thought the artful Dodger was so cool that we started our own shoplifting ring. It didn't matter what it was, as long as it wasn't paid for - it was treasure. Eventually one of the gang was apprehended on his way out of a hardware store with a screw-driver down his pants, and the consequences were serious enough to us then to end our spree. I often think of that as I check out the things my kids watch on Cartoon Network and I despair for the future of humanity. And this is to say nothing of the fact that two puppy-love-stricken young lads got an early lesson in the wiles of the fairer sex. That is there's nothing fair about it.

As far as parents are concerned, there's nothing you can do if you don't with your child to see such a film, because in 4 months it will be out on video and they'll watch it at their friend's house 10 times.