SUMMARY:

Tormented by bullies, his stuffy teacher (George Lopez), and parents who are too busy arguing to notice him (David Arquette and Kristin Davis), Max (Cayden Boyd) retreats to his fantasy world where he interacts with the half-boy, half-shark Shark Boy (Taylor Lautner), and the fiery Lava Girl (Taylor Dooley). When the dynamic duo come calling for Max to help save their home, Planet Drool, from being overcome by darkness, the boy is whisked away for an adventure that will take his imagination to the limit.

STEVE SAYS:

Patty dodged the bullet on this one. I was charged with taking a visiting 10-year-old to see THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D. Our son, 14-year-old Chris wisely declined as well. Say what you want about the boy, but he has taste.

In our recent review of the animated feature, MADAGASCAR, I commented on the difference between family films that entertain a wide variety of ages and kiddie films that leave parents and anyone over the age of 12 looking for the nearest exit. SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL is very definitely a kiddie film.

I knew we were in for trouble when the opening credits proclaimed, “Based on the dreams of Racer Max Rodriguez.” Racer is filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s eight year old son, who also appears at the younger Shark Boy. Dreams are nice, but not necessarily material to support a feature film.

Rodriguez is a major booster of digital filmmaking with a home studio that allowed him to create the stunning visuals for the recent SIN CITY. But the fact that you can create anything in CGI doesn’t mean you necessarily should. SB and LG is a mess from start to finish. It could well be the most excruciating one hour and twenty-three minutes that I’ve ever spent in a movie theater.

Rodriguez insists on employing the old style red and blue type of 3-D, which invariably makes the picture difficult to watch and leaves one with a throbbing headache. The Polaroid style of 3-D is much easier on the eyes and renders an image that isn’t so consistently dark that you’re wondering what’s happening. Rodriguez covers his bases here by using 3-D for the most part only on “Planet Drool,” which is being plunged into darkness by an evildoer. See? The planet’s in darkness, so you don’t really need to be able to see that well. Yeah, right.

In fairness, the ten-year-old loved it. He’d never seen a 3-D movie before and was fascinated with it. It surprised me a little, since I didn’t think the uber-juvenile plotting would appeal to anyone over the age of six. As for me, I had to fight the urge to spring to my feet and scream, “Just kill me now!”

Rodriguez is a facile filmmaker and his SPY KIDS movies (at least the first two) were quite good in the genre of child-empowerment themes. In THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D, there is a lame theme running through the film that basically posits the idea that kids should hang onto their dreams. That’s fine. Just don’t make me watch them.

The acting is uniformly awful by the eye-bugging George Lopez, who plays the dual roles of Max’s teacher, Mr. Electricidad and the villain on Planet Drool, who is some sort of electrical thing-a-ma-jig. Most of the kids are terrible actors as well, with the exception of 12-year-old Taylor Dooley as Lava Girl, who shows some small measure of grace on camera. As for David Arquette and Kristin Davis, they just look embarrassed in most of their scenes. Did Davis not make enough on SEX AND THE CITY to need a paycheck this badly? As for Arquette...well...check his resume. He’ll do just about anything.

So the moral of the story is...if your kids say they want to see “THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D,” be sure to go to the multiplex where you can drop them while you go see something else. If they’re too young for that, hire someone to go with them; and be sure you pay them a lot. They will earn their money.

Oh and about those two leads, Taylor Lautner (boy) and Taylor Dooley (girl)...could we maybe have a moratorium on naming kids Taylor for a while? Just a thought.

If you’re ten or under, THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D is worth about three kernels. If you’re any older, make that a generous half-kernel.

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June 15, 2005