Sharkboy and Lava Girl has achieved a level of infamy few other children's films really reach. This movie is so bad, so ugly, so tremendously incompetent that it's honestly worth studying. Look, I love Robert Rodriguez as a director. I think he's a man with a lot of passion, vision, and drive, and I respect his dedication to film and doing a lot of stuff himself.
But...it takes a special kind of hubris to take your child's insane ramblings (sorry, I mean..."dreams") and turn it into a full length feature film. To be fair, this film does feel like a child wrote it; it's so nonsensical and often, incomprehensible, I genuinely believe Racer Max Rodriguez (yes, his child's honest-to-God name) had a role in the writer's room.
The two worst things about this movie are its visuals and its performances. This thing is truly an assault on the eyes; it's got some of the ugliest CG I have ever seen and honestly looks like a parody film you'd find on YouTube. The backgrounds, the action, the CG characters all look unacceptably bad for a film from 2005 and come off sometimes actually horrific. (That Lava Girl-as-lava image is indelibly burned in my mind now)
Most of the time, the film's primarily child actors (except the boy who plays Linus - he rules) don't seem to understand what they're supposed to be seeing and acting against. It leads to some truly hilarious moments, like when Lava Girl and Sharkboy are looking in different directions while talking to the same person or the actors don't get what emotion they're supposed to convey.
To be fair, most of the adults are also pretty bad here as well; there's a scene where Kristin Davis and David Arquette (our protagonist Max's parents) are supposed to be giants and eating from..."the land of cookies and milk." Arquette holds the cookie in the palm of his hand and eats it, essentially confirming he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.
This movie is so full of awkward and cringe inducing moments, yet you can't even give Rodriguez credit for being imaginative. This is such a predictable and paint by numbers story, and the world that we enter isn't even that interesting. We have...giant plug monsters and "trains of thought" and the aforementioned giant dessert world...is this really as creative as it could've been?
As it stands, this movie is truly awful. But so bad, it's genuinely hilarious. You need to watch it, preferably under the influence of something.
But...it takes a special kind of hubris to take your child's insane ramblings (sorry, I mean..."dreams") and turn it into a full length feature film. To be fair, this film does feel like a child wrote it; it's so nonsensical and often, incomprehensible, I genuinely believe Racer Max Rodriguez (yes, his child's honest-to-God name) had a role in the writer's room.
The two worst things about this movie are its visuals and its performances. This thing is truly an assault on the eyes; it's got some of the ugliest CG I have ever seen and honestly looks like a parody film you'd find on YouTube. The backgrounds, the action, the CG characters all look unacceptably bad for a film from 2005 and come off sometimes actually horrific. (That Lava Girl-as-lava image is indelibly burned in my mind now)
Most of the time, the film's primarily child actors (except the boy who plays Linus - he rules) don't seem to understand what they're supposed to be seeing and acting against. It leads to some truly hilarious moments, like when Lava Girl and Sharkboy are looking in different directions while talking to the same person or the actors don't get what emotion they're supposed to convey.
To be fair, most of the adults are also pretty bad here as well; there's a scene where Kristin Davis and David Arquette (our protagonist Max's parents) are supposed to be giants and eating from..."the land of cookies and milk." Arquette holds the cookie in the palm of his hand and eats it, essentially confirming he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.
This movie is so full of awkward and cringe inducing moments, yet you can't even give Rodriguez credit for being imaginative. This is such a predictable and paint by numbers story, and the world that we enter isn't even that interesting. We have...giant plug monsters and "trains of thought" and the aforementioned giant dessert world...is this really as creative as it could've been?
As it stands, this movie is truly awful. But so bad, it's genuinely hilarious. You need to watch it, preferably under the influence of something.