EBC Cinema Lounge:
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
Part of the EBC Review Lounge Series
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
Part of the EBC Review Lounge Series
Ah, Robert Rodriguez. At times, he is a great director driven by an active imagination. At others, he's a really bad director driven by an active desire for more money. I personally think that of the movies I've seen, most are crap and the rest are OK with one great one.
Of his adult films, the only one I've seen is Sin City. I thought it was over dramatic, over wrought, gory for no real reason, depressing, trying to be artsy and avant garde without making much sense, but only slightly crap because of nice action scenes.
But he's more well known for his kids' movies. Unless you've been living under a rock I'm sure you've heard of Spy Kids, his multimillion dollar franchise. I LOVED Spy Kids when I was nine, and still love it now. It had everything- fun characters, great jokes, goofy setting, just a terrific movie overall.
I thought The Island of Lost Dreams was pretty good, thought Spy Kids 3-D Game Over was terrible because the 3-D was too much and too in your face and the story was so predictable (I was 12 and more cynical by now
), and will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER see Spy Kids 4: All The Time In the World if I was paid $1,000,000 to do it. I normally like to watch so bad it's hilariously stupid movies, but whoever came up with the idea that scratch and sniff cards in movies were a good idea deserves to be dealt with quietly. :violentgun:
And there's Sharkboy and Lavagirl, which played on Disney Channel yesterday. My sister and I were glued to and laughing at it, but not in a good way. Look, I'm sure that Rodriguez's kids are nice and all, but I came up with a bunch of ideas for stories when I was younger and most of them were not turned into $50 MILLION MOVIES. Unjust, I tell you. I was a boy savant at age five. flail.gif
Well, the movie starts off boringly enough with the story of an imaginative but shy kid named Max whose parents are going through a rough patch because his mom's a stereotypical career bitch and his dad's a stereotypical writer with his head in the clouds. Stop me if you've heard this a hundred million times. Kids at school pick on him, his teacher (played by the worst comedian of our time, George Lopez) is an ass who should have been fired, and he is picked on for believing that fictional characters he dreamed up named Sharkboy and Lavagirl ARE REAL?!?! Holy shit! This kid is 10 and I know it's supposed to be all childlike wonder and stuff, but he needs help! :blink:
And then Sharkboy and Lavagirl literally crash into his classroom in the middle of a horrible CGI tornado (I wish I was making this up) in a massively confusing plot hole ridden deus ex machina and whisk him away to Planet Drool (HA HA YOU'RE NOT FUNNY!) to save their planet of vomit inducing, plastic looking CGI and every conceivable object being hurled at the audience for no reason BECAUSE 3-D THAT'S WHY. And from there the characters are boring and any development is beaten out with a sledgehammer of subtlety, the movie constantly takes time out to lecture us on the themes of dreaming and imagination and not running away from your problems, every dreaming metaphor you've ever heard of is made into a groan inducing pun, there's even a horrible music number performed by a young Taylor Lautner...
Well, why so serious, you may ask?! It's for kids, right? WRONG! :axe:
I hate it when kids are talked down to by their entertainment and told what they're supposed to feel, especially when they're just supposed to shut up and like the 3-D dammit. The idea of kids coming to terms with dream worlds or their imaginations was done better A HUNDRED YEARS AGO by the Little Nemo comic, by Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, and more recently by Spirited Away. Kids growing up was done MUCH better by Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Every Blue Sky and Pixar film EVER has more realistic computer animation and stories a million times more original than this crap. And for a great and non-annoying use of 3-D in a kids' movie, look no further than Up!
Rodriguez, seriously, get out of the kids movie business. You're so consumed by 3-D that you can't even make a good movie anymore. But at least you still made me laugh.
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My rating is: *
They should use repeated viewings of this movie to torture people for information! :troll:
P.S. I saw the commercials for the (horrible) new Disney Channel shows after years of not seeing it and I weep for the days of That's So Raven, Suite Life, Halloweentown, Timon & Pumbaa, Buzz Lightyear, the Proud Family...and I also mourn Time Warp, the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Dexter's Laboratory, and Samurai Jack on Cartoon Network, The Fairly OddParents, SpongeBob, Rocko's Modern Life, AAAAH REAL MONSTERS, Rugrats, and Avatar on Nickelodeon, and the entire Kids WB! lineup. :evil:
