Be wary if you ever come across Shorts director Robert Rodriguez on the street. Depending on whether he’s in Spy Kids or Grindhouse mode, he’d either cheerfully greet you and your children with digital rainbows spurting from his fingertips, or he’d run at you, foaming at the mouth, clutching a bloodied machete (which coincidently is the name of his next film).  Catch him in Shorts mode however, and you’ll get a bit of both. One on hand, it’s a kid-friendly caper that’s drunk a bit too much CGI-spiked red cordial. But on the other, Rodriguez has hacked-up the film’s chronology into five bite-sized ‘shorts’, crafting it into a PG-rated Pulp Fiction.

The film is narrated by young Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennet), who can’t keep his hands off the fast-forward and rewind button of the VCR remote as he recounts an unusually eventful day in his suburban town of Black Falls. Everyone in the seemingly idyllic town is employed by Black Box Industries, the manufacturer of a high-tech gadget that can be manipulated into an array of electrical devices; from televisions to toasters. The company is run by money-hungry boss-from-hell Mr. Black (James Spader) who has little time for his spiteful daughter Helvetica (Jolie Vanier). Living up to the first syllable of her name, Helvetica bullies Toe every morning before school, but that all changes when he comes across a rainbow-coloured rock that brings the bearers every wish to life.Yet Toe’s wish for a friend doesn’t quite turn out as he had in mind when a bunch of miniature alien ‘friends’ materialize instead, wrecking havoc in his classroom.

This is the first of many ‘be careful what you wish for’ scenarios to play out over the five chapters, where Toe and a half-dozen other kids wish into existence a canyon of poisonous snakes, an army of wall-climbing crocodiles, a giant man-eating booger and an array of other wacky CGI creations. There is a flimsy narrative linking each chapter together, but due to the film’s needlessly fractured chronology, it’s difficult to decipher for even the tallest members of the audience. That being said, understanding the big picture is not what Shorts is all about. Like a series of Saturday morning cartoons, it’s a flash-flood of colour and special effects that entertains in the moment, even if it’s easily forgotten shortly after.

Jimmy Bennet (Star Trek, Orphan) makes a solid Macaulay Culkin impression in the film’s lead, but it’s young Jolie Vanier in her feature debut who steals the show as antagonist Helvetica. Surrounded by mostly one-dimensional characters, Vanier’s layered performance hints that behind Helvetica’s callous exterior, there’s a troubled girl longing for her father’s attention. While the adult co-stars have limited presence, William H. Macy as an obsessive-compulsive germaphobe and Leslie Mann and Jon Cryer as Toe’s technology-addicted parents — who txt each other while standing in the same room – make for some amusing stereotypes.

If Spy Kids had wide appeal and Shark Boy and Lava Girl had no appeal, then Shorts has very specific appeal. For adults, the film overindulges so much in its own hyperactivity, it starts to feel more like a giant commercial break crammed with spruikers screaming for our attention. If it had been any longer than 90 minutes, I’d have suggested you bring along earplugs and an eye-mask. Yet this unbridled energy coupled with the sheer imagination of the film is exactly what will keep the kids in the audience — particularly young boys — glued to their seats. This is not an assumption either; during the final chapter of Shorts, I heard a young boy in the cinema plea to his mother for the film not to end. As the intend audience of the film, you can’t really argue with that.

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