3-D flick foolishly flops

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D" was a very upsetting movie. Robert Rodriguez is wonderful -- "Spy Kids" was great, the "El Mariachi" trilogy was amazing and "Sin City" was fabulous -- but this movie is an unequivocal flop. \nThe film tells the story of Max (Cayden Boyd), a young dreamer, and his adventure in helping his two dream-friends, Shark Boy and Lava Girl (Taylor Lautner and Taylor Dooley respectively), save Planet Drool. There's more to it, but it's of the dizzying, dreamworld type that I had trouble grasping. I felt like a confused little kid watching it. The movie is like one big, bad sugar high, and I wasn't coming down. My 21-year-old brain kept finding little holes and discontinuities, but the 5,000 little kids around me apparently found no problem with it. This is a kids movie, but even as the kids bounced around in their little cardboard glasses, I was a little lost. \nBut 3-D! How cool, right? Sadly, oh-so-sadly, no. The screen would flash "Glasses On" or "Glasses Off," but every time I had to put my glasses back on, I was disappointed. Somehow, the 3-D came across as drab and boring. Lava Girl has hair of purple fire and skin of molten lava. How then, did most of the movie seem to lack sufficient color? There were a few points where the 3-D lent itself to a cool effect, but on a whole, it just created a muddy, slightly three-dimensional and painfully drab look. If Rodriguez had pulled out all the stops, this could've been the children's movie that reset the standard. \nAnd I hate to be the reviewer that slams child actors, but the kids in this movie were terrible. Wooden, unconvincing, and adorable to a fault, Taylor Dooley, Taylor Lautner and Cayden Boyd were close to awful. There are good child actors. They're just not in this movie. The other actors in the movie, namely, George Lopez, who plays Max's teacher Mr. Electricidad, and David Arquette and Kristin Davis, who play Max's parents, were no better. Arquette and Davis tend to suck in everything they're in, but George Lopez was a true disappointment. \nWith children's movies, the criterion is clever without being didactic and funny and sweet without being cloying. The best children's movies ("The Incredibles," "Spy Kids," "Shrek" or old-school Disney) are entertaining for adults. Unfortunately, "Shark Boy and Lava Girl" don't meet a single one of these standards -- it's just dumb.