'Shark Boy' proves some dreams are better left unfulfilled
By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service
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| THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D (PG) Two Stars (Fair)
Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez here adapts the fantasies of his 7-year-old son, who imagines an adventure with two bizarre comic-book heroes. Sweet idea, but not a smart one. Dimension, 92 minutes. |
Robert Rodriguez, the usually inventive Texas tornado of a filmmaker, has tried it, without much success. In "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D," he adapts the fantasies of his 7-year-old son, Racer Max, who imagines an adventure with two bizarre comic-book heroes.
Max (Cayden Boyd) is struggling with unhappy parents at home (David Arquette and Kristin Davis), with bullies at school, and with a summer vacation that's no fun. So he escapes into his imagination, where he zooms off to Planet Drool with Shark Boy (Taylor Lautner), a youngster raised by sharks who now has fins, gills and rows of sharp teeth, and Lava Girl (Taylor Dooley), a young lady born in a volcano with molten lava coursing through her body. The enemy on Drool is a giant, robot creature with the face of Max's schoolteacher (a wasted George Lopez).
Acting in the film runs from adequate to poor, with youngster Lautner coming off the worst as a bratty, utterly unlikable Shark Boy.
Presumably, youngsters will enjoy Racer Max's kiddie's comic-book adventures, but older viewers will find the film messy, overindulgent and a strain.
And, talking about strain, the film marks a step backward for 3-D, after the positive recent inroads of the Imax "Polar Express" and Rodriguez's own "Spy Kids 3-D." This time the left-hand red lens on the glasses they provide is so dark it's a distraction, and the film's overall color nearly disappears in the 3-D sequences. Rodriguez also only requires the glasses for about half the movie, so we wonder what will happen when the youngsters drop or misplace the glasses halfway through the movie when they aren't required to wear them?
Rated PG, with mild violence and rude humor.
