Catch That Kid (2004)

12 year old Maddy is a climbing enthusiast whose best friends are a go-kart mechanic and a wannabe film-maker.  When Maddy's dad loses the use of his legs, and the only solution requires a $250,000 medical procedure, the three youngsters set out to rob a bank: one that rather implausibly suspends its vault a hundred feet in the air, so that Maddy will have to climb something.

So four years before she would start raking in the big bucks (and enduring the flak) that comes with playing the lead in the Twilight series, Kristen Stewart played the lead in this tween-targeted bit of nonsense.

Catch That Kid is harmless fun, especially if you have the sense of humour of a twelve year old, but it suffers from some pretty lazy writing.  For instance, a couple of pretty major plot points rest on the fact that everyone loves Maddy's dad ... but we only know this to be the case because one of Maddy's friends says "Everyone loves your dad!".  You're supposed to show, not tell, guys.  And the fact that you're a silly kids film doesn't excuse you from that.

I mean, you want me to suspend my disbelief that three pre-teens are going to rob a bank with a supposedly state of the art (if incomplete) security system, and a vault that's ten storeys in the air (begging the question of how you actually put anything in it)?  Sure, I'm willing to go with that.  And you want me to accept go-karts that can outrun cop cars, because something something nitrous oxide?  No problem.  But don't cheap out on setting up the emotional beats of your movie.  And it's the emotional connection that's missing from Catch That Kid, making it ultimately feel a bit empty as a film.