'Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D' is a whimsical spectacle for the eyes

Friday, June 10, 2005

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Robert Rodriguez is not the most intellectual of filmmakers. At his best, he's a big kid constructing cinematic amusement parks on the big screen, giving his imagination and sense of whimsy free rein, like a schoolyard Terry Gilliam on a sugar high. Nowhere is that more apparent than in "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D," a superhero and video game-wired "Wizard of Oz" that celebrates and encourages the fantasy lives of kids.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D

DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez

CAST: Cayden Boyd,

Taylor Lautner, Taylor Dooley,

George Lopez

RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes

RATING: PG for mild action and some rude humor

GRADE: B

LINKS/TRAILERS
· Official site

PHOTO GALLERY

View all photos

Max (Cayden Boyd) is a fourth-grade dreamer with a hyperactive imagination. His Oz isn't over the rainbow, it's the Planet Drool, a dream world protected by scrappy, aggressive Shark Boy (Taylor Lautner) and good-hearted but frustrated Lava Girl (Taylor Dooley) that is thrown into peril when Max is told by his parents to stop dreaming (David Arquette and Kristin Davis) and his supportive but literal teacher (George Lopez).

Billed as "A Rodriguez Family Movie," Rodriguez's screenplay is based on the childhood stories of his son, Rocket Max, and written in collaboration with his brother, Marcel. The film is full of adolescent creativity -- from a whimsical dreamland of milk and cookies to a living electric villain (Lopez) with a menagerie of extension cord snakes and plug-hound creatures to visual puns made literal -- inspired by designs he collaborated on with his kids.

The execution of the fantasy scenes are more playful than dramatic, pushed into the realm of fun-loving spectacle by fanciful, digitally sculpted dimensional effects that tease the eyes. But if the technology has advanced to make 3-D effects bubble and pop, the audience is still stuck with 50-year-old, red-and-blue tinted glasses that strain the eyes and cause headaches. (Note to Rodriguez: Please learn to pace your 3-D sequences and give our eyes a rest!)

There is such a joy of play in the film that it's easy to overlook the overdone performances and the lazy script shortcuts. The film's naive charm, filtered through Rodriguez's big kid-in-a-candy-store filmmaking sensibility, engages on the level of childlike -- and at times defiantly, delightfully childish -- imagination.