Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl in 3-D

Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl (2-D & 3-D Versions included) DVD

Robert Rodriguez SPY KIDS DESPERADO directed this hyperkinetic kids' film based on a script by his pre-teen son Racer. The plot concerns a daydreaming youngster named Max Cayden Boyd whose fantasy stories about the titular superheroes--the molten-hot Lava Girl Taylor Dooley and a boy raised by sharks appropriately named Shark Boy Taylor Lautner--inspire the ridicule of everyone from the local bullies to his own mom Kristin Davis. Even Max's fourth grade teacher George Lopez wants him to come down to earth but then a tornado brings Shark Boy and Lava Girl into the school to whisk Max off to the planet Drool where only his dreaming skills can save the day. A real kid's active imagination is obviously at work here because the giddy action flies in all directions with a cheerful disregard for conventions of logic or sanity and Rodriguez is obviously the right sort of adult to bring such a film to life he must be a great dad. The message about the importance of not just believing in your dreams but working to achieve them should prove relevant for an audience who may be spending a bit too much time in front of the TV or computer game. The cool 3-D effects are something else with goo and fists and lunging Shark Boy regularly leaping off of the screen. But even without the 3-D amplification viewers will be dazzled by the film's wild day-glo color scheme.

Adv of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D

10 year old max is an outcast little boy who has become lost in his own fantasy world in an attempt to escape the worries of dealing with his parents, school bullies and no-fun summer vacations. But when max realizes the characters and adventures in his imagination might be real, his whole world changes.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl [VHS]

Writer/director/e ditor/special-effe cts- supervisor Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Desperado) continues to storm the movie world with The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl in 3-D. A young boy named Max (Cayden Boyd) finds the real world crashing into his dreams: His parents fight, bullies harrass him at school, and his teacher advises him to get a grip on reality. But Max's faith in his fantasies is so strong that his superheroic creations SharkBoy (Taylor Lautner) and LavaGirl (Taylor Dooley) crash into Max's classroom and take him off to rescue the fantastic planet he dreamed up. Towards the end, SharkBoy and LavaGirl crumbles with clumsy story gaps and bland moral advice, but most of the movie explodes with visual invention. A clockwork villain with electrical limbs commands an army of extension-cord snakes; SharkBoy uses his claws to engrave a diagram of the solar system into a chalkboard; LavaGirl's burning feet melt an ice bridge as she runs across it. It's disappointing that Rodriguez's storytelling flounders, but sections of deliciously fluid movie-making make The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl in 3-D worth seeing nonetheless. Also featuring David Arquette (Eight Legged Freaks), Kristin Davis (Sex in the City), and George Lopez (Real Women Have Curves). --Bret Fetzer