573. The Adventures Of Sharkboy And Lavagirl In 3-D (2005)

Starring: Taylor Lautner, Taylor Dooley, Cayden Boyd

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Running Time: 93 mins

The Adventures Of Sharkboy And Lavagirl In 3-D is an American film about a young boy, Max, who dreams of two superheroes called Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and with their help, he must help to defend the Planet Drool from falling into the hands of a terrible villain.

There’s little, almost nothing, good to say about this film, apart from the fact that I did actually like it when I saw it as an 8-year-old, showing that it’s potentially enjoyable for kids.

However, in almost every other aspect, it’s a horrible film to look at, with revolting CGI and forced 3D effects, along with some of the most emotionless acting I’ve ever seen, a preposterous and dull plot, and one of the main characters who seems to be clinically depressed, despite being in a kids’ film.

You’d think that in this sort of overly-simplistic, special effects-obsessed kids’ film, they’d avoid trying to make any sort of emotional subtext, and admit that it is solely aimed to entertain kids. However, what you’ve got in this film is a horribly forced message saying that if you dream it, it will happen, said almost every 2 minutes throughout, along with some characters that seem to be desperate to find their place in this world, which is completely irrelevant to the rest of the story.

In terms of the plot itself, this movie does maintain some very simple, potentially enjoyable ideas, but in turn creates a story that’s so unbelievably predictable and idiotic, it’s boring, never as exciting as it intends to be, and often almost painful to watch.

But the worst thing by a mile is the special effects. Looking like it’s been made on Paint, and then animated by a 2 year old, you have a constant blend of fluorescent colours that are constantly thrown right at your face every step of the way, often making me feel sick.

And then, there’s the 3D. In the post-Polar Express obsession with 3D, it appears that this film assumed that it would be fun to have such an ‘amazing experience’ with the third dimension, without giving much attention to the plot, and therefore jumped on the bandwagon by creating a film full of stuff being thrown into your eyes every second.

It’s not even Digital 3D, but is instead made in that stupid blue-and-red 3D format (i.e. those glasses you used to get free on the front of a comic book), which is a horrible viewing experience for a 90-minute film, so because of that, along with all of it’s other faults, this gets a 4.4.