The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl 3-D [2005]

Having done Sin City, Robert Rodriguez evidently feels a need to counter-program by turning out an innocuous children's film – this was evidently based on characters created by his seven-year-old son Racer Max, who should probably get another job before he turns ten. It's similar in its premise to Godzilla's Revenge [!] as a boy [Cayden Boyd] with a dreamer failed inventor Dad [David Arquette] and more practical Mom [Kristin Davis] has a hard time at school because he presents a fantasy story about Sharkboy [Taylor Lautner] and Lava Girl [Taylor Dooley] instead of a true 'what I did on my vacation' essay. However, a twister devastates the classroom and the heroes from his dreams – or his imagination, it's nebulous – turn up to whisk him off to Planet Drool, where he needs to face avatars of his teacher, the buzzing Mr Electric [George Lopez] and the school bully [Jacob Davich]. The bulk of the film is in the same 3-D process that was used in Spy Kids 3-D – which yields an effective depth illusion, but is problematic in other ways since it tends to bleach the colours to an unmagical mauvish blandness reminiscent of Tron. The Spy Kids films benefit from solid grown-up performances and talented kids, but this puts too much load on not-particularly-skilled child players [Sasha Pieterse, who has the smallest role, comes off best], though they get very little interesting to say or do. There are imaginative vistas based mostly on clever child-appeal puns [a stream of cosnciousness, a brain storm] and Mr Electric [a big face in a hemisphere with crackling arcs connected to limbs] is a good design, but it's a busy, headachey picture. Sharkboy and Lava Girl themselves aren't that interesting in their standard superpowers or whiney characters – and there's something suspect about putting a pre-pubertal girl in a skintight, butt-emphasisising superheroine costume.

First published in this form here.

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