The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D

The most brilliantly, wonderfully terrible film I’ve seen in many a year, it was something special! Truly – in terms of cheesy, stupid, so-bad-they’re-good movies for lovers of irony, this should be the Holy Grail. It had no plot, terrible dialogue, some of the worst performances ever immortalised on film (especially from the girl from Sex and the City who I find rather attractive and David Arquette as the two parents), but that just added to its charm, and its charm was immense.

A young boy named Max escapes problems at home and bullying at school by going into the fantasy world of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, but of course, no-one believes his stories. When reality and fantasy begin to mix, and it seems that another force is changing the world Max has dreamed up, he must learn VERY IMPORTANT lessons about accepting the realities of life, standing up for yourself and, um…psychologically demolishing bullies. All with daft 3-D effects and some terrible CG!

Brimful of bad puns, the story reminded me more of The Phantom Tollbooth with fight scenes than a conventional action flick, and it was the whimsical high-camp that made it so entertaining. Yes, it’s stupid, but it believes in itself, and as such, is charming. This coheres with the performances of the three lead children: Rodriguez isn’t interested in getting good performances out of them, but they play their flimsy roles with such belief, such abandon, such conviction that even when they have to do a toe-curling scene of song and dance, it’s irresistibly cute. It helps that even though they’re all slightly funny-looking in real life, Rodriguez’ camera makes them all stunning beautiful. It was about the prettiest film I’ve seen since Peter Pan, and Taylor Lautner (Shark Boy) in particular was mesmerizing. A truly stunning martial artist so absorbed with the physicality of his role that he seemed to want to surf everywhere, I found his overacting perfect.

Unsurprisingly, given how seriously film critics take life, Shark Boy and Lava Girl is getting some shocking reviews. I’m surprised, though, that people will like Sin City (Rodriguez’s last offering) but dislike Shark Boy and Lava Girl. I loved them both, but in a very similar way: both weren’t actually any good, lacked any sort of character or story development, but were thoroughly enjoyable because of the coherence of the vision, the lowbrow fun of the ideas and the visual appeal. It seems strange that someone will think something childish and puerile is dreadful, but something adolescent and puerile is excellent – in fact, it seems likely that there wasn’t any irony in their praise of the schlock that was Sin City. Oh well!