Performance art has never encountered a dearth of bad child acting. From school plays to the Santa Clause 3, I daresay, bad child acting will never not be a thing so long as our culture insists upon trotting the pre-pubescent out on stage. And yet one man has been responsible for our collective exposure to more bad child acting than every school nativity play combined. That man, of course, is Robert Rodriguez, and his latest film, We Can Be Heroes couldn’t have been more poorly acted/directed than if it had been presented as filler for a zoom meeting at a non-profit company.
Robert Rodriguez made Sin City. I have to keep telling myself that when I see another one of these things. In Sin City, Robert Rodriguez made one of my favorite films ever, a gorgeous, poignant, no-holds-barred salute to graphic novels. And in the very same year Robert Rodriguez wrote and directed Sin City, he also wrote and directed The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D, thus displaying his entire gamut of talent and tolerance, insight and incredulity, craftiness and clumsiness. I don’t know why Robert keeps making child-friendly films; oh, they’re colorful and mildly empowering, I suppose, yet they’re also terrible beasts of cloying, mawkish nihilism, like an artistic leper colony. What really gets me is I have yet to see a decent child performance in a Robert Rodriguez film, and yet, few people on this planet have devoted, and continue to devote more disposable footage to heroic children.
Speaking of disposable footage, We Can Be Heroes is today’s film, and –honestly- it might not have been that bad if I had believed a single performance in the thing. While the superpowered children took center stage, adults like Boyd Holbrook, Pedro Pascal, and Priyanka Chopra were not immune from poor line delivery and: “What exactly are you going for here,” either. It took me -literally- ten seconds for me to sour on this film. Ten. In an opening scene combining lousy acting and shitty science, Miracle Guy (yes, “Miracle Guy” – Holbrook) whipped up his best Homelander impression while exploring space only to find tentacle monster aliens have come to enslave the planet. ten seconds in and I already don’t believe anything on the screen; is that a record?
Luckily, the Heroics are on the job. Oops, they’re done. Well that sure didn’t take long.
Luckily, the children of the Heroics are on the job. Well, if we’re really talking luck, we should mention that it’s lucky the Heroics are all hetero, fertile, and all spawned heroic, well-meaning children. The children are kept –literally- on lockdown while their parents fail to save the planet. There’s a premonition kid who seems to know that the tentacle foes are going after the children next, so the Hero-spawn escape using their various individual powers of stretchiness, singiness, and silliness. The only kid with no superpowers is Missy (YaYa Gosselin), so she’s the leader … which, if that sounds like a fabrication, it’s only because it is. Missy leads them to her aunt, so they can –and I’m not kidding here—train.
The aliens have landed; they have abducted and held hostage the greatest heroes known to humankind; they have given 
humanity a three-hour window before they blow up the place, and the only possible saviors for the planet have gone into training. Dudes, three hours. You don’t even have time for a montage.
There are so many ways in which this film doesn’t work that one can count them all. I mean plot and terrible acting are just hints at the worthlessness within. I dare any non-child to enjoy a single character in this film. Now, that said – it is very possible that your small and unpretentious children will enjoy this film a lot. It’s about kids with superpowers. It’s about kids who save the world. It’s about kids who succeed where their parents have failed. It’s about kids who prove themselves in front of their adoring and kid-attentive parents. If I’m, say, seven-years-old and not-the-favorite child in the fam and I wear a Batman costume every Halloween, well, gotta say, We Can Be Heroes might be my favorite movie for a while.
God help you if you are the parent of a child I have just described.
Editors note: Where did Taylor Lautner go? Taylor Dooley revised her role as Lavagirl for this one. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t acted since 2005. (oh yeah, prove it) I don’t see anybody knocking on Taylor Lautner’s door these days. What’s you excuse, wolfboy? Don’t you owe Robert Rodriguez big time?
♪I, I’m cosplaying
And you, you want to be seen
Yes talent won’t get in our way
We’ve got a camera, we put in on “play”
We can be actors, we shot all day♫
Rated PG, 100 Minutes
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Writer: Robert Rodriguez
Genre: Films for the filter-challenged
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Your would-be superhero child
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Any adult with taste
♪ Parody Inspired by “Heroes”
