The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005)

½ star
The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D is bad enough already, but the addition of 3-D effects makes it worse. I don't know what Robert Rodriguez's fixation is with 3-D, and I don't care to understand it. Most of his film is very dark, with heightened shadow detail and pale-skinned characters. This is because we have to wear those ancient blue and red glasses, which create the desired three-dimensional effects, but also dominate over every other color on the screen. It looks like we're watching the movie through a stained-glass window.

While watching this so-called family movie, one of the emptiest and unsatisfying I've ever seen, I conjured up memories from my youth, when I went to Disneyland and saw Francis Ford Coppola's Captain EO, starring Michael Jackson. This is a short film that premiered in 1986, and the folks who made it realized something that Rodriguez has yet to learn—blue and red glasses are distracting. As a result, they used a different filming process and a newer kind of glasses to produce a better 3-D effect, and indeed Universal Studios uses the same technique with T2 3-D and Shrek 4-D today.

Even if this were a straight film without any gimmicky 3-D, it would still be terrible. Max (Cayden Boyd) is a dreamer. He created imaginary heroes Shark Boy and Lava Girl in his mind, due to his inability to make friends at school. (He’s not helping his cause when he stands in front of the classroom to tell everybody about how he spent his summer with Shark Boy.) Through an amazing circumstance, Shark Boy and Lava Girl (Taylor Lautner and Taylor Dooley) show up in Max's classroom. They need his help to save their world from disaster.

For reasons completely unexplained, and thankfully so, Max's dreams have all achieved physical form on a planet “just outside our solar system.” Max and his two half-baked X-Men journey to the planet Drool, where they encounter beings and landscapes formulated completely out of Max's mind. Among the things I recognized were an old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and the original Gameboy. How a grade school kid in 2005 would dream of such things, I have no idea.

Max, Shark Boy and Lava Girl negotiate various obstacles on their way to save the land of Drool from erasure. It's like The Neverending Story in that sense, but it totally lacks any kind of imagination, memorable dialogue, exciting action, scary moments and satisfying villains. Most of the action is staged so that characters can stick their fists into the camera, or throw things at it, so that the 3-D effect can catch us off guard. It worked a few times, but what really caught me off guard was the script's lousy scenario. It's replete with unhelpful scenes that offer a lot of gibberish over the rules of this land and how Max has to discover his powers in order to defeat the bad guys.

This movie, the title of which will undoubtedly be the longest of the year, is a maddening creature. It's not as corrupt as Are We There Yet?, but it displays tremendous irresponsibility all the same. I don't expect all children's entertainment to be an educational experience. However, I do expect children's entertainment to put some effort into a decent script and include some interesting characters. Interestingly, Rodriguez's 7-year-old son concocted the story of Shark Boy and Lava Girl. This reminds me of an episode of the The Simpsons, in which Homer designed his idea of a dream car for his brother’s automobile company. It turned out to be piece of junk, and he put his brother’s company out of business. Interpret this analogy as you see fit.

© 2005 Silver Screen Reviews