We Can Be Heroes review: Robert Rodriguez’s latest is made squarely for kids, with sincerity and heart

Dir: Robert Rodriguez. Featuring: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Pedro Pascal, YaYa Gosselin, Boyd Holbrook, Sung Kang, Taylor Dooley, Christian Slater. PG, 100 mins

Robert Rodriguez, the director who gave Salma Hayek a giant python for her striptease in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Enrique Iglesias a flamethrowing guitar case in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), has landed himself an unexpected side hustle. His kid-centric action films – the Spy Kids quadrilogy, Shorts (2009), and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2005) – haven’t all been hits, but they were perfectly tailored to a generation that continues to embrace their hyperactive tone and techno-wizardry aesthetics.

His latest contribution, Netflix’s We Can Be Heroes, is still aimed squarely at the kids, minus a few more mature nods for the parents and a dose of nostalgia – an appearance by a grown-up Lavagirl (Taylor Dooley) and Sharkboy (JJ Dashnaw, stepping in for Taylor Lautner) place this film in the same universe as their own film, though it doesn’t quite brand itself as a sequel.

We Can Be Heroes has been created in the image of its stylistic predecessors, offering a bright, occasionally garish fantasy world that is upfront in its message that kids are the future – “the next generation is always better than the last”, says one character, with absolute confidence. But there’s a lack of pretension to Rodriguez’s work that makes the film surprisingly likeable, despite its flaws. At times, its scrappy enthusiasm feels reminiscent of the live-action kids TV shows of yore.

It’s also surprisingly star-packed. Pedro Pascal, fresh off The Mandalorian and Wonder Woman 1984, joins Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Christian Slater as the members of an Avengers-like squad known as the Heroics. When the team get kidnapped by alien invaders, it’s down to their kids to save the day. Rodriguez, who also wrote the script, gives the junior squad a mix of powers that feels suitably goofy (but eventually, narratively useful). There are bickering twins who can both rewind and fast forward time (Isaiah Russell-Bailey and Akira Akbar); a boy who moves only in slow-motion (Dylan Henry Lau); and a girl who draws the future on her iPad (Hala Finley). Sharkboy and Lavagirl’s daughter Guppy (Bird Box’s Vivien Lyra Blair), the youngest of the group, can both manipulate water and possesses “shark strength” – meaning we get to watch a pint-sized superhero toss grown men across the room. The group’s leader, Missy (YaYa Gosselin), daughter of Pascal’s katana-wielding Marcus Moreno, doesn’t have any powers. But, over time, she finds her place in the group.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl was originally based on a story by Rodriguez’s own son, Racer Max. That may not be the case here, but there’s no doubt Rodriguez has tried to see things from a child’s point of view – the adults are always either outright villains or dorks who just can’t seem to get along. Pascal and Slater play things broad but relatively straight, while Chopra Jonas swans around like she’s in a Christmas panto. The kids always have an idea of how to do things better – why not simply lure the bad guys out of the city, so that the fight doesn’t inevitably end with a bunch of toppled buildings?

But children could do with a film that validates them, as the opening narration describes, “at a time in the world when things [are] feeling less and less certain”. Rodriguez’s film has a simple nobility to it that does a lot to overcome the slapdash CGI and cheap sets. It’s always easier to embrace something when it’s made with sincerity and heart.