Psycho's Movie Reviews #362: The Adventures Of Sharkboy And Lavagirl (2005)

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, is a 2005 American 3D superhero adventure film co-written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and originally released in the United States on June 10, 2005. The production companies were Dimension Films, Columbia Pictures and Troublemaker Studios. The film uses the anaglyph 3-D technology, similar to the one used in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003). The film stars Taylor Lautner, Taylor Dooley, Cayden Boyd, David Arquette, Kristin Davis and George Lopez. Many of the concepts and much of the story were conceived by Rodriguez's children. The film received negative reviews from critics with much of the criticism directed at the film's story and poor 3-D, while the visual aspects and performances received some praise. The film also underperformed at the box office earning just $39 million in the United States and $72 million worldwide on a $50 million budget.

The special effects were done by Hybride Technologies, CafeFX, The Orphanage, Post Logic, Hydraulx, Industrial Light & Magic, R!ot Pictures, Tippett Studio, Amalgamated Pixels, Intelligent Creatures and Troublemaker Digital.

Another film featuring Sharkboy and Lavagirl, We Can Be Heroes, was released on Netflix on December 25, 2020 with Dooley reprising her role.

Plot

Max is a lonely 10-year-old boy living in the suburbs of Austin. In his imagination he has created a dreamworld named Planet Drool, where his dreams come to life. It contains two main characters: Sharkboy, who was raised by sharks after losing his father (a marine biologist) at sea, and became a shark-hybrid himself, and Lavagirl, who can produce fire and lava but has trouble controlling her power, so that objects often catch fire when she touches them. The pair act as protectors of Planet Drool. In the real world, Max's parents have little time for him, and their marriage is not going well. At school, he is bullied by his classmate Linus. He does receive some friendship from Marissa, the daughter of the teacher, Mr. Electricidad. Linus steals Max's dream journal and threatens to "make changes" to it. The next day, twin tornadoes form outside the school. Sharkboy and Lavagirl emerge from the storm and ask Max to accompany them to Planet Drool, which he learns is turning bad thanks to Mr. Electric, a robot resembling Mr. Electricidad and the dreamworld's now-corrupt electrician, under the orders of an unknown mastermind. They travel to Planet Drool with the Shark Rocket with an autopilot control. Max then realizes that he has never come up with a landing function.

They confront Mr. Electric in his lair, but he drops them into the Dream Graveyard, where many of Max's dreams have been dumped. They find Tobor, a robot toy that Max never finished building after being discouraged by his father. Tobor carries them to other parts of the planet. The three bond during their journey, but face hardships, such as Sharkboy's anger that the oceans are frozen over, and Lavagirl's desperation to find her true purpose on Planet Drool. They are pursued by Mr. Electric and his "plughounds". They plan to reach the Ice Princess and obtain the Crystal Heart, with which they could freeze time, giving them enough time to get to the center of Planet Drool and for Max to fix the dreamworld by re-dreaming it. Instead, they are captured by Mr. Electric and delivered to the mastermind, who is revealed to be Minus, a villain resembling Linus who has altered Max's journal and hence the dreamworld. Minus traps them in a cage. Sharkboy becomes enraged by singing bubbles and destroys the cage in a "shark frenzy". Max retrieves his dream journal while Minus is sleeping. Reading the book, Max informs Sharkboy that his father is still alive, but when Lavagirl wishes to learn what it says about her true identity, she grabs the book and it burns to ash. In a desperate rage, Lavagirl asks Max why he made her out of lava, and runs off. Max wants to follow, but Sharkboy tells him to let her cool down.

The three eventually reach the Ice Princess, who resembles Marissa. She hands over the Crystal Heart, but they are unable to stop the corruption, since the Ice Princess is the only one who can use the Crystal Heart's power, and cannot leave her home. Afterwards, Mr. Electric seemingly kills Sharkboy by tricking him into jumping into water filled with electric eels, which are his weakness. Lavagirl sacrifices herself by jumping into the water to retrieve him. Max realizes he has been selfish in wanting to get back to Earth. Tobor appears and convinces Max to dream a better, unselfish dream. Just then, Sharkboy regains consciousness and races Lavagirl to a volcano to revive her. Max realizes that Lavagirl's purpose is as a light against the darkness which has engulfed Planet Drool. Max becomes the "Daydreamer" and gains reality-warping powers to defeats Minus. He then offers that the two join to make a better dreamworld, and Minus agrees. Lavagirl thanks Max and Sharkboy for saving her.

Minus offers to let Mr. Electric return to running Planet Drool, but Mr. Electric reveals that he never enjoyed doing so in the first place. He tells Max that he made a terrible mistake of dreaming him up and flies to Earth to destroy Max while he is dreaming. Max awakens back in his classroom during the tornado storm. Mr. Electric arrives in the tornado in front of the class and an astonished Mr. Electricidad. Max's parents are caught in the storm too, but are saved by Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Max gives the Crystal Heart to Marissa so she can use the Ice Princess's powers to freeze and destroy Mr. Electric. Mr. Electricidad, Linus, and Max make peace with one another, and Max reunites with his now-reconciled parents.

Later, Max informs his class that Planet Drool is a proper dreamworld once again, that Sharkboy is now King of the Ocean and that Lavagirl is Queen of the Volcanoes. As the film shows Max finally finishing Tobor, he reminds the class to "dream a better dream, and work to make it real".

Production

Parts of the film were shot on location in Texas in September to December 2004, where Max resides and goes to school in the film. Much of the film was shot in a studio against green screen. Most of the ships, landscapes and other effects including some creatures and characters, were accomplished digitally. According to Lautner and Dooley, when filming the scene with the dream train, the front part of the train was an actual physical set piece. "The whole inside was there and when they have all the gadgets you can pull on, that was all there but everything else was a green screen," said Dooley. Eleven visual effects companies (Hybride Technologies, CafeFX, The Orphanage, Post Logic, Hydraulx, Industrial Light & Magic, R!ot Pictures, Tippett Studio, Amalgamated Pixels and Intelligent Creatures and Rodriguez's Texas-based Troublemaker Digital) worked on the film in order to accomplish over 1,000 visual effect shots.

Robert Rodriguez appears in the credits fourteen times, most notably as director, a producer, a screenwriter (along with Marcel Rodriguez), visual effects supervisor, director of photography, editor, a camera operator, and a composer and performer. The story is credited to Racer Max Rodriguez, with additional story elements by Rebecca Rodriguez, who also wrote the lyrics for the main song, "Sharkboy and Lavagirl". Other members of the Rodriguez family can be seen in the film or were involved in the production.

Miley Cyrus had auditioned for the film with Lautner, and said it came down to her and another girl who was also auditioning; however, Cyrus then began production on Hannah Montana, and thus the other girl, supposedly Dooley, got the role.

Music

Director Robert Rodriguez composed parts of the score himself, with contributions by composers John Debney and Graeme Revell.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D holds a 19% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 124 reviews, with an average rating of 4.33/10. The consensus reads, "The decision to turn this kiddie fantasy into a 3-D film was a miscalculation." Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and agreed with the other criticisms in which the 3-D process used was distracting and muted the colours, thus, he believes, "spoiling" much of the film and that the film would look more visually appealing when released in the home media market.

For its opening weekend, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D earned $12.6 million in 2,655 theaters. It was placed at number 5 at the box office, being overshadowed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Madagascar, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, and The Longest Yard. The film was not very successful in the US, taking in $39.2 million and was a box office bomb. However, it did manage to gross $32.8 million overseas, for a total of $72 million worldwide.

Budget $50 million

Box office $72 million

My Review

I personally have no real problem with 3D, as long as it is done well and has a good story and characters. Sadly, that's where The Adventures of SharkBoy and Lava Girl fails. I like Robert Rodriguez and thought his first two Spy Kids movies were very enjoyable and while mediocre I actually thought the third Spy Kids film was better than this too. I will give some credit, the moral is decent if hardly original and there is some energy. But everything else falls flat.

People might say the art direction was colourful and pleasing to the eye. Sorry, for me it was very tacky, gaudy and brash. And as for the 3D, it is actually some of the worst I've seen, it needed more clarity and sharpness and sometimes moved too fast. Also I found it distracting in alternative to enhancing. The soundtrack is rather plodding, generic and unmemorable too.

The script is absolutely awful too. Any parts that tried to be funny made me roll my eyes to be perfectly honest with you, while the story is unevenly paced and very weak and predictable. The characters are just as weak and bland too, the two main characters have their likable moments but there is little chemistry between them and the audience while the supporting characters fare even worse suffering either from being underused or overacted. Overall, the acting is very uneven and way too broad in some cases.

Other disappointments are the poor pace and plodding direction from Rodriguez. So in conclusion, the result is a pretty awful, overstuffed and disappointing effort of a family film.

The film was not popular with the critics, much of the criticism being directed at the allegedly poor 3-D effects and the storyline. It does not seem to be very popular with reviewers on this board either; it is rare that I review a film with a rating as low as 3.5. Well, I myself cannot comment on the 3-D, as I saw it in a 2-D television version. As for the storyline, I felt that too many of the critics were forgetting that this is a children's film and trying to judge it by adult standards.

Certainly, judged by the logic of the everyday, rational world the story does not make a great deal of sense. But that is not the logic by which the film should be judged. Its logic is that of "Alice in Wonderland" or "The Wizard of Oz", that is to say the logic of the dream. As Lavagirl says "Everything that is or ever was began with a dream". Much of the story was, in fact, thought up by the children of the writer-director Robert Rodriguez. This is, however, an "Alice in Wonderland" updated for the computer age of the 21st century. Mr Electricidad's alter ego on Planet Drool is the planet's electrician Mr. Electric, and much of the film's imagery is drawn from the world of technology, such as a robot or "plughounds", dog-like creatures made out of electrical cables. There are, however, more conventional fairy-tale elements, such as the Ice Princess (based on Marissa), who possesses a Crystal Heart which can freeze time.

Trying to judge a film like this one is difficult for me, because I have no children of my own. I have to try and think myself back into my own childhood and ask "Would I have enjoyed a film like this in those days?" And the answer is "Yes, I would", even though "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" is very different to anything that was actually about in the sixties and seventies when I was young. Yes, the story may be eccentric, even at time silly. But that is just what many kids like. 3/10