The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3 D

Plot

Max (Cayden Boyd) is a lonely child in the suburbs of Austin who creates an imaginary world named Planet Drool, where all of his imagination and dreams come to life. He creates two characters; Sharkboy (Taylor Lautner), a young boy who was raised by sharks after losing his father at sea, and Lavagirl (Taylor Dooley), who can produce fire and lava, but has trouble touching objects without setting them alight. The two left Max to guard Planet Drool. In real life, Max's parents (David Arquette and Kristin Davis) have little time for him, and their marriage seems to be on the rocks, and he is bullied by fellow schoolmate Linus (Jacob Davich). However, he does receive friendship from Marissa (Sasha Pieterse), the daughter of his teacher Mr. Electricidad (George Lopez), whose name is Spanish for "electricity". After a chase around the local park, Linus steals Max's dream journal (where all of his most precious dreams are kept), and vandalizes it. The next day, as Max attempts to retaliate, twin tornadoes form outside the school, and moments later, Sharkboy and Lavagirl appear, and ask Max to come with them to Planet Drool. They reach Planet Drool via a shark-like spacecraft, where Max learns that the dreamworld is turning bad, courtesy of Mr. Electric (also portrayed by George Lopez), originally the dreamworld's electrician, but now corrupted.

Sharkboy and Lavagirl save some children from an out-of-control roller coaster called "Mount Neverrest". Then with Max, they confront Mr. Electric, who quickly drops them in a part of Planet Drool called the Dream Graveyard, where some of Max's dreams have been dumped. They find Tobor (voiced by George Lopez), a robot toy that was never finished being built by Max, but offers them a lift to other parts of the planet (in which they ride on his eyes and mouth since he can't move the rest of his body parts). Whilst on the journey, the three form a friendship, but they face hardships, such as Sharkboy's anger for the oceans being frozen over, and Lavagirl's desperation to find her true purpose on Planet Drool. They are pursued by Mr. Electric and his "plughounds" across the planet. They plan to visit the Ice Princess, and obtain the Crystal Heart, which can freeze time, giving them enough time to get to the center of Planet Drool, and fix the dreamworld using Max's daydreaming. However, they are captured by Mr. Electric, and delivered to Linus's Planet Drool incarnation Minus, who has altered the dreamworld with Max's own Dream Journal, and traps the three in a cage. Sharkboy gets annoyed by Linus and has a shark frenzy, destroying the cage. Max retrieves the Dream Journal from Minus while he is sleeping, after the three escape. Max informs Sharkboy that his father is alive in his book, but when Lavagirl wishes to find out what it says about her true identity, she burns the book to ash. In rage, Lavagirl asks him why she was made out of lava, but Sharkboy tells Max to let her cool down.

With little time left, Max, Sharkboy, and Lavagirl reach the Ice Princess, the Planet Drool incarnation of Marissa Electricidad (Sasha Pieterse), after an encounter with the Ice Guardian (voiced by George Lopez). She hands over the Crystal Heart, but they find they are too late to stop the corruption since the ice princess is the only one who can use the Crystal Heart's power, and she cannot leave her home. Mr. Electric fools Sharkboy into jumping into water filled with electric eels, seemingly killing him. Lavagirl jumps into the water to retrieve Sharkboy, but dies moments later. Tobor's face appears, and convinces Max to dream a better and unselfish dream, which in turn revives Sharkboy, who then races Lavagirl to a volcano, where she too is revived. Max witnesses her revival, and concludes that her purpose is as a light against the dark clouds which have slowly engulfed Planet Drool's skies. Max gains reality warping as the Daydreamer, and battles Linus/Minus, defeating him, and offering to make a better dreamworld between the two of them, which Minus agrees to.

Mr. Electric refuses to accept the new dreamworld, and flies off to Earth to kill Max while he is dreaming. Max awakens back in his classroom in the middle of the storm. Mr. Electric materializes before Max and an astonished Mr. Electricidad. Max's parents get sucked into the storm, but are saved by Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Max gives the Crystal Heart to Marissa, allowing her to gain the Ice Princess's powers, which she uses to freeze, and destroy Mr. Electric. Mr. Electricidad, Linus and Max all make peace with one another, and Max is reunited with his parents.

In the end, Max informs his class that Planet Drool became a proper dreamworld again, Sharkboy became the King of the Ocean, and Lavagirl became Queen of the Volcanoes, including aquatic ones, and as the film shows Max finally finishing Tobor, he reminds the class to "dream a better dream, and work to make it real."

Cast

Robert Rodriguez has an uncredited role voicing a shark. As seen in the credits, two of Robert Rodriguez's children, Rebel and Racer, portray Sharkboy at age five and age seven respectively. Rico Torres plays Sharkboy's father. Marc Musso and Shane Graham play kids at Max's school.

Production

Parts of the film were shot on location in Texas, where Max resides and goes to school in the film. Much of the film was shot in a studio against green screen. Most of the ships, landscapes and other effects including some creatures and characters, were accomplished digitally. According to Lautner and Dooley, when filming the scene with the dream train, the front part of the train was an actual physical set piece. "The whole inside was there and when they have all the gadgets you can pull on, that was all there but everything else was a green screen," said Dooley. Eleven visual effects companies (Hybride Technologies, CafeFX, The Orphanage, Post Logic, Hydraulx, Industrial Light & Magic, R!ot Pictures, Tippett Studio, Amalgamated Pixels and Intelligent Creatures and Rodriguez's Texas-based Troublemaker Digital) worked on the film in order to accomplish over 1,000 visual effect shots.

Robert Rodriguez appears in the credits fourteen times, most notably as director, a producer, a screenwriter (along with Marcel Rodriguez), visual effects supervisor, director of photography, editor, a camera operator, and a composer and performer. The story is credited to Racer Max Rodriguez, with additional story elements by Rebecca Rodriguez, who also wrote the lyrics for the main song, "Sharkboy and Lavagirl". Other members of the Rodriguez family can be seen in the film or were involved in the production.

Miley Cyrus had auditioned for the film with Lautner, and said it came down to her and another girl who was also auditioning; however, Cyrus began production on Hannah Montana.

Critical response

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl received a 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the consensus: "The decision to turn this kiddie fantasy into a 3-D film was a miscalculation." Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and agreed with the other criticisms in which the 3-D process used was distracting and muted the colors, thus, he believes, "spoiling" much of the film and that the film would look more visually appealing when released in the home media market.

Box office

For its opening weekend, the film earned $12.6 million in 2,655 theaters. It also was placed #5 at the box office, being overshadowed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Madagascar, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, and The Longest Yard. The film was not very successful in the US, taking in $39,177,541 and was a box office bomb. However, it did manage to gross $30,248,282 overseas, for a total of $69,425,966 worldwide.

Lawsuit

The Total Nonstop Action professional wrestler Dean Roll, who trademarked the name "Shark Boy" in 1999, sued Miramax on June 8, 2005, claiming that his trademark had been infringed and demanding "[any] money, profits and advantages wrongfully gained". In April 2007, the suit was settled for a disclosed amount of $200,000.

Soundtrack

Director Robert Rodriguez composed parts of the score himself, with contributions by composers John Debney and Graeme Revell. Green Day were reportedly set to contribute "Wake Me Up When September Ends" to the soundtrack, but Robert Rodriguez declined it.

Books

Around the time of the film's debut Rodriguez co-wrote a series of children's novels entitled Sharkboy and Lavagirl Adventures with acclaimed science fiction writer Chris Roberson. They include Book 1, The Day Dreamer, and Book 2, Return to Planet Drool, which announces that it will be continued in a third volume, Deep Sleep, which has yet to appear. They are illustrated throughout by Alex Toader, who designed characters and environments for the film and the previous Spy Kids franchise.

In the first book, the story of the film is told from Lavagirl's and Sharkboy's perspective, with at least one new event. In Return to Planet Drool, Sharkboy, remembering his encounter with the Imagineer in the first book, continues the search for his father by seeking to return to the Dream World. He meets a very bored Lavagirl in the underwater city of Vent, where she now reigns as queen, and together they embark on a subterranean journey. They encounter piranhas, a gargantuan red bear, and a city of inhabited by the dreams of bygone eras, where they are held captive by superheroes, pirates, and cowboys. By the end, after learning the city's secrets, Sharkboy still hopes to find his father, and Lavagirl the secrets of her origin.

Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly praised another book appearing around the time of the film, The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl: The Movie Storybook (by Racer Max Rodriguez and Robert Rodriguez), as a far cry from the usual movie storybook tie-in, and also praised Alex Toader's "cartoony yet detailed" illustrations.