Why can't Sharkboy breathe underwater? And why would supposedly valiant heroes steal
cookies? Here are a few things about "The Adventures of Sharkboy
and Lavagirl" that people only seem to think about once they've grown up.
In the mid-2000s, Robert Rodriguez was arguably at the height of his powers.
The Texas-born filmmaker had gone from producing "El Mariachi" for a mere seven
thousand dollars in 1992 to developing beloved hits like "Desperado," "From Dusk Till Dawn,"
and of course, the "Spy Kids" films. However, "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" was
undeniably a low point in the director's career.
Even the most inane, toilet-humor-based kids movies will often throw in some jokes for the
parents. "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," however, is aimed squarely at the kids — and that's
because it was partially written by one. The opening titles of "Sharkboy and Lavagirl"
introduce it as "a Rodriguez family movie," based on the dreams of then-7-year-old
Racer Max Rodriguez, who also played young Sharkboy in the opening scene.
The adults in the movie, although played by household-name actors like George Lopez,
David Arquette, and Kristin Davis, still deliver stiff, awkward dialogue that sounds like a child's
idea of the way an adult might speak. For an adult hoping for action like "Desperado,"
a compelling narrative like "Sin City," or special effects like "Alita: Battle Angel,"
"Sharkboy and Lavagirl" is certainly one of the less compelling Rodriguez films.
The word "dream" — or some variation of it — is uttered a total of 188 times throughout
"Sharkboy and Lavagirl's" 93-minute run time. That means the word is being said, on average,
once every thirty seconds — but in some scenes, it's much more often than that.
Even by the fiftieth time, it still isn't very clear what the movie has to say about dreams,
other than that they're a good thing to have. Young Max is mocked by his classmates for
reading stories about Sharkboy and Lavagirl from his dream journal — but then, his dreams turn
out to be real, so Linus and the other kids learn that dreams are good because… they can
become real? But Max's dream almost destroys the school, and that doesn't sound very good at all.
There's also the matter of Max's parents. His father is an unemployed writer,
and his inability to get a reliable job has pushed his parents to the brink of divorce.
At the film's climax, rather than finding some sort of mature compromise,
the pair have a near-death discussion where they remind each other that they're best friends,
reconciling without actually resolving the issue at hand. Rather than have Max's father figure
out a way to follow his dreams while still supporting his family, the movie just… ends.
"Sharkboy and Lavagirl" makes such a repetitive point about the importance
of dreaming that it seems like it should actually have something to say by the end of it. Instead,
all this talk of dreams eventually starts to sound more like a nightmare.
"The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" is, on the one hand, refreshingly colorful and vivid.
During a time when even kid-targeted action movies were slowly inching towards gloomy,
dystopian franchises like "The Maze Runner" and "The Hunger Games," the
colorful world of Drool stood out as a unique vision. On the other hand, when
an adult watches "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," they see a film drunk on its own greenscreen power,
one that makes you wonder how it could have possibly cost $50 million to produce.
At the time of the film's release in 2005, CGI was being used more and more in
all sorts of movies, but the technology was at the end of an awkward transitional phase.
"Sharkboy and Lavagirl" was shot almost entirely in front of a green screen — and it shows,
with its more fantastical settings resembling a Windows screensaver more than a major motion
picture. That's not to say that CGI-heavy movies can't be good — 1982's "TRON" and 2008's "Speed
Racer" are both underrated gems — but as an adult watching "Sharkboy and Lavagirl" in 2021,
it's hard to not be distracted by visual effects less sophisticated than an Instagram filter.
Additionally, the 3D technology used for "Sharkboy and Lavagirl"
made for a good selling point, but did little to actually make the film look good.
"Sharkboy and Lavagirl" utilized anaglyph 3D — the kind that uses those red and blue glasses — which
just made the movie look even worse on the big screen. As Roger Ebert put it in his review,
"Fully three quarters of the movie is in '3'-D, which looks more like 1-D to me,
removing the brightness and life of the movie's colors and replacing them with a drab,
listless palette, which is about as exciting as looking at a 3-D bowl of oatmeal."
In 2005, George Lopez was at the top of his game. He was gearing up for the fifth season
of his highly-rated sitcom "George Lopez," he'd made cameos in shows like "Curb Your
Enthusiasm," and he'd established himself as a well-respected stand-up comedian.
In "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," Lopez fully commits to his dual role as Max's teacher Mr. Electricidad,
as well as one of the chief bad guys on Planet Drool, Mr. Electric.
Both roles are over the top, of course, and Lopez mostly pulls them off.
Highlights include his demand for Max and his bully to be friends as a teacher,
or his constant spouting of electricity-based puns as a floating orb with claws for hands.
"Hey, watts up? You know, watts!"
But why did George Lopez also have to provide a voiceover for Max's childhood robot
Tobor? Following the success of films like "Aladdin" and "Shrek," Hollywood
had developed something of an obsession with casting movie stars in voice roles,
largely ignoring an entire industry of talented voice professionals who had
been providing their talents to cartoons and animated movies for decades prior.
So, rather than finding the perfect voice actor to design an endearing identity for Tobor around,
the audience gets George Lopez again — and yet again for a fourth time as a guardian
of the Ice Princess. Robert Rodriguez himself even voices a talking shark,
further trading creativity for mediocre, uninspired stunt casting.
Out of everyone in "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," it's clear that
future "Twilight" heartthrob Taylor Lautner is the actor who possesses
"it," that indefinable quality that makes a movie star, well, a movie star.
When production on the film began,
Lautner was just 12 years old. He already had an extensive martial arts background,
earning a black belt by age 8 and appearing in a national karate tournament in 2003.
Lautner was the first and only actor to audition for the role of Sharkboy:
Rodriguez was truly convinced he was perfect from the very beginning.
Sure enough, Lautner's Sharkboy is a glowering menace: he never stops moving and rages easily,
snarling and yelling without holding back. He plays an important role in the most standout
action scene of the film, using his martial arts skills in an elaborate fight with Mr. Electric's
dog-like cord monsters. Rodriguez even asked Lautner to choreograph his own fight scenes.
Lautner also takes center stage for one of the most bizarre and memorable moments of
"Sharkboy and Lavagirl:" a ridiculous, inexplicably aggressive lullaby that he
sings to get Max to fall asleep and dream planet Drool back to its rightful shape.
He busts impressive dance moves while sing-yelling all sorts of absurd lines.
It's a shame that Taylor Lautner couldn't return for "We Can Be Heroes," the 2020
quasi-sequel to "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," as he was undoubtedly the true star of the original.
You'd think that the whole point of having elements of Max's dream
world echo elements of Max's real world would be to illuminate his
relationships with the people and things that surround him. Lavagirl, for example,
asks Max why he made her Sharkboy's partner when they're, quote, "not compatible" — the
same words Max's mother used to describe why she and Max's father are not getting along.
Such moments could, if properly and somewhat clearly presented,
give a film like this greater depth. Unfortunately, Sharkboy and Lavagirl
breeze past the questions as quickly as they bring it up. The additional presence of Max's
parents as cookie-hungry giants on planet Drool just serves to make things even more confusing.
Then there's Mr. Electricidad, who allows his daughter Marissa to face off against a giant
robot with his own face on it. While the idea of a girl facing off against
an imaginary construct of her own father seems like it could be rich with symbolism,
such moments don't seem to connect to any greater theme,
other than revolving around a loose, Freudian concept of dreams being inherently meaningful.
"The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" has a few off-putting attempts at the sort of
wink-wink adult humor other children's movies sometimes tackle with wit and subtlety. Here,
however, they come across as awkward at best, and just plain confusing at worst.
At one point, Sharkboy says he's heard that the Ice Princess is the "most beautiful girl
on the planet," causing Lavagirl to get jealous and zap him in the butt
with her lava powers. Other moments include Mr. Electricidad's insistence
that Max stays away from his daughter, and Linus' reaction to Lavagirl burning his desk.
"She's hot!" [shredding paper]
During moments like these, it feels like you can see remnants of a screenplay with jokes
intended for adults, but they're ultimately more half-baked than the cookies in Max's kitchen.
In "We Can Be Heroes," it is revealed that the pair eventually got together and had a
child of their own. At some point, it seems that what was once implied has now become explicit.
It might seem like a minor detail, but early on in "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," Max wakes up to find that
the cookies his mom baked and left in the kitchen have been strangely consumed. One of the cookies
has jagged, shark-like teeth marks in it, while the other is burnt and remains hot to the touch.
His parents, of course, don't believe his repeated insistence that it wasn't
him who ate the baked treats — and clearly, judging from the evidence,
it was Sharkboy and Lavagirl. It's not until the next day that the duo reveal themselves as
real heroes, recruiting Max to help them save planet Drool while he's asleep in class.
As cute as the scene might be, it also begs a question: Why bother sneaking into his house
the night before they were going to contact him anyway? Are the heroes like Santa Claus?
Did they think it would be funny to get Max into trouble? Not only
has Max seemingly discovered that Sharkboy and Lavagirl are real, but in this scene,
he also learns that they have no issues with chocolate chip thievery.
After he wraps up his battle with Minus on Drool, Lavagirl tells Max to blink three times,
which will take him home — much like Dorothy clicking her heels together
in "The Wizard of Oz." When he does so, he wakes up back in his classroom,
implying that a large portion of what we've just seen was a dream of some sort.
But during that "dream," Max fell asleep and had another dream inside of that dream. Is that
even possible? It seems like "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" is a lot like "Inception,"
but without Leonardo DiCaprio patiently explaining how things work. There are dreams within dreams,
and then those dreams intrude on what you thought was reality all along. Like dreams themselves,
the whole thing is as impossible to follow as it is to explain to anyone else.
This is yet another nitpick, but it's the sort of thing that can really nag an adult. Up until the
very last battle on Drool, it is made abundantly clear that Sharkboy possesses the abilities of,
well, a shark. After being lost at sea, Sharkboy was raised by sharks,
growing sharp teeth, fins, and gills as he adapted to the shark lifestyle.
However, in the big showdown with Mr. Electricidad,
electric eels get the better of Sharkboy, nearly causing him to drown.
You know, because sharks have to watch out, or they could drown.
"Can he survive down there?"
"He can hold his breath, but not forever. He'll drown if I don't go get him."
What about the gills that we saw all up and down his sides, at the beginning of the film?
It's an example of a screenplay giving a character a newfound limitation, simply because it is
called for at that particular moment to build dramatic tension. It's also frustratingly lazy.
Nearly two decades later, "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" continues to hold a
special place in the hearts of those who discovered it as kids. However,
thanks to all sorts of bizarre moments and choices, you'd probably be doing yourself a favor
to keep the movie in your memories rather than revisiting it on your streaming site of choice.
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