When Earth is threatened by an alien spaceship, no-one is much concerned. Miracle Guy will handle it. When it turns out to be an entire alien armada ... people still aren't that concerned. Earth has a whole team of superpowered heroes like Miracle Guy, "The Heroics". They can handle anything, right?
As it turns out, not so much. More focused on their rivalries and grievances with each other than on the alien menace, the Heroics all end up isolated, outmatched and captured.
With Earth's greatest defenders out of the picture, the authorities are scrambling, locking down everything they can - including the children of the defeated Heroics. Said children, however, are not interested in sitting in a bunker somewhere while the parents - and also the planet - are in danger. Led by Missy Moreno, the only one among them with no powers, they break out of their secure location and take the fight to the aliens.
Robert Rodriguez is best known for violent action movies like Sin City and Once Upon A Time in Mexico, but We Can Be Heroes is actually the sixth family-friendly film he's written and directed. Like the previous five such films, it involves kids with unusual abilities taking on a strange, often surrealistic menace.
The best of Rodriguez's family-friendly films is the first: the original Spy Kids. I think the difference between that and this film - and all the others, for that matter - is that Spy Kids is more than just kid-friendly gags. It's got plenty of little references and visual puns that adults can enjoy, making it genuinely a family film.
To be fair to We Can Be Heroes, it does work in a few such 'grown-up friendly' elements. Overall though, it is definitely heavily-slanted toward a tweens-and-younger audience. On that basis, it's a decent enough little movie, with a likeable young cast.
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