A repellent fantasy failure with a plot quite literally conceived by a child calls out for a hero on Netflix

As he tends to do, Robert Rodriguez wore a mountainous amount of hats on 2005’s family-friendly fantasy The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, but he decided not to put on one of the most important.

The maverick filmmaker makes no less than 14 appearances in the credits in a variety of guises as director, co-writer, producer, composer, cinematographer, editor, re-recording mixer, visual effects supervisor, and many more, but the sole story credit belongs to his son Racer Max.

Following in the family business is one thing – and no shock when Hollywood is so rife with nepotism – but the fact Rodriguez Jr. had only just turned eight years old when Sharkboy and Lavagirl hit theaters helps explain a lot about the movie’s final quality.

Of course, it’s harsh to rag on a kid for coming up with a terrible idea, but that didn’t stop his old man from acquiring $50 million in funding to make it a reality, so why should it be off-limits? After all, the best kid-friendly adventures have plenty to recommend for adults, too, but a critical panning and commercial cratering underlined that there wasn’t much going on beyond a Rodriguez clan vanity project.

Unless of course you’re one of the many Netflix subscribers to have propelled Sharkboy and Lavagirl back onto the streaming service’s most-watched charts this week, with FlixPatrol outing the dismally dull superhero story as a surprise hit on the platform close to 20 years after its initial release, and months after it became a stick used to beat Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania to death.