'We Can Be Heroes': Robert Rodriguez Embraces His Inner Child In This Forgettable Superhero Film [Review]

As one of Hollywood’s more restless pop myth-makers, Robert Rodriguez seems determined to continue cranking out sequels to his most beloved movies, regardless of whether or not the public asked for them. The question of whether or not these narrative continuations are strictly necessary seems almost irrelevant when one considers the infectious degree of unfettered moviemaking zeal that Rodriguez generously pours into each new project, whether it’s the James Cameron-assisted cyberpunk actioner “Alita: Battle Angel,” or stepping in to direct an episode of “The Mandalorian.”

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Spy Kids” remains one of Rodriguez’s enduring triumphs: a spunky, sweet, light-on-its-feet family movie that understood that children are often so much smarter than the media frequently marketed towards them would indicate. The first “Spy Kids” was a big enough hit to spawn three sequels, each one slightly less magical than the one that came before. It’s an issue that other, more “adult” late-period Rodriguez joints, namely “Machete Kills” and “Sin City: A Dame To Kill For,” have also suffered from. One of the lesser-discussed entries in Rodriguez’s oeuvre is his bubblegum kid’s adventure “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl in 3-D,” and while we’re not sure how many folks were clamoring for a sequel to that movie, Netflix, who are now the go-to distributors for auteurs looking to make a passion project with blank-check money, have delivered just that with “We Can Be Heroes”: a sort-of sequel to “Sharkboy and Lavagirl” that acts as a yuletide offering from the Austin-based multihyphenate in the final days of this terrible year. Say what you will about Mr. Rodriguez, at least he’s generous. 

On one hand, there is most definitely something endearingly slapdash about a family-friendly superhero flick that feels like it was patched together over the course of a long weekend. Rodriguez got his start making lo-fi home movies, and even when there are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, his films still maintain that gonzo sense of handcrafted, D.I.Y. energy. “We Can Be Heroes,” however aggressively hyperactive it feels in execution, is ultimately an innocuous and sporadically inventive piece of pop-culture regurgitation from a director who should have evolved past this material by now but, for better or worse, has yet to lose touch with his inner child. In other words, this forgettable new lark, however dashed-off it feels in the moment, remains almost impossible to actively dislike, largely due to its overwhelming sincerity and pure-heartedness.

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Like “Sharkboy and Lava Girl,” “We Can Be Heroes” is another Rodriguez family affair: Racer Rodriguez, responsible for helping to conceive the idea for that earlier film, is credited as a producer, while Rebel Rodriguez composed the score. “Heroes” plays like a Disney Channel update on Joss Whedon’sThe Avengers,” to the point where the insignia of the movie’s central squad, imaginatively named The Heroics, is nearly identical to the Avenger’s signature “A.” The Heroics are comprised of a cadre of Rodriguez’s movie star pals, a group that includes Boyd Holbrook as Miracle Guy, Christian Slater as somebody named Tech-No (with powers that are never explicitly made clear), and the tremendous Pedro Pascal as Marcus Moreno, the only Heroic without a cool nickname. As he did in “Wonder Woman 1984,” Pascal once again enlivens a somewhat unwieldy blockbuster with the sheer, smoldering fortitude of his matinee-idol charm (thankfully, Rodriguez doesn’t make the actor don an atrocious wig in this new outing).

“We Can Be Heroes” kicks into gear when the Heroics find themselves the captives of hostile alien invaders. Don’t ask too much anything about the particulars of these vaguely realized extraterrestrial foes, who essentially exist as floating, tentacled purple monstrosities that look as though Rodriguez doodled their design in under an hour. The appealing YaYa Gosselin stars as Marcus’ plucky young daughter Missy, who is irked with her father for prioritizing the planet’s safety over his paternal duties. Missy is then shuffled off to a fortified daycare center for superhero youth, where the stern Ms. Granada (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas) calls the shots. Missy quickly befriends her fellow tykes, each of whom has a name that explicitly describes their power: for instance, Rewind and Fast Forward are a pair of mischief-makers who possess the ability to accelerate reverse time (take that, “Tenet”), FaceMaker… makes faces, and Slow-Mo, in a gag that somehow never gets old, is constantly running in slow-motion. 

The rest of “We Can Be Heroes” sees these pint-sized do-gooders summoning up the courage required to save the day, freeing their parents from the alien spacecraft, restoring balance to the world, yadda yadda yadda. In spite of its bubblegum frivolity, Rodriguez’s movie comes dangerously close to topicality at times: it depicts a world where an older generation has handed their children a raw deal, and “leadership” comes in the form of an ineffectual commander-in-chief (Christopher McDonald, naturally) who, as one character complains, can “barely put two sentences together.” “Heroes” is colorful and garish and relentlessly energized; as such, it’s not designed to work for anyone who wouldn’t be permitted into a PG-13 movie without a guardian. The movie, rather predictably, ends with a promise for a sequel that no one really asked for. Whether or not the world needs a second chapter of this fizzy YA spectacle, we’re sure that Rodriguez will get around to it sooner or later. [C]

“We Can Be Heroes” is available on Netflix now.