The Road To El Dorado
rated PG 82 minutes Dreamworks featuring the voices of Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline, Rosie Perez, Edward James Olmos, and Armand Assante written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio directed by Bibo Bergeron and Will Finn
A Review by Frankie Paiva
In recent years the animation genre has greatly improved. Computers are leading the way into a new dimension of thinking about animation. Witness the deep, luscious jungles of Tarzan, or the amazing computer work in Toy Story 2. There have also been animated films aimed at adults (like Antz, Princess Mononoke, and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut) that have seen success at the box office. But for every Iron Giant, there must be a Pokemon: The First Movie. While the images of The Road To El Dorado are beautiful, it's missing what an animated kids movie needs most: A good story, humor, and memorable characters. This movie is most likely to quickly fade away, just like the golden sun of the city.
It's 16th century Spain, and Miguel (Branagh) and Tulio (Kline) are con men trying to escape from Pamplona city guards. They stow away on a ship with the mighty Cortez and are washed up on the island where El Dorado is. The two journey through the forests and jungles until they reach the magical place. It is marvelous indeed. Gold lines everything in sight, the two are in heaven. Due to several natural occurrences and misunderstandings, the two men are mistaken as gods and are worshipped by all of the people. They are hailed with gold and riches, if they keep this up, who knows how much gold they could rack up? The two decide to stay for several days, rack up all the gold they can, and head back to Spain. Soon sexy villager Chel (Perez) is also in on the con game. A crazy priest (Assante) who believes that the gods deserve sacrifices also comes into the picture, he's just one of the many badly motivated people in this film, which is littered with potential bad guys. All of this builds up to a predictable and inevitable conclusion.
The major rave I can give to the movie is the astounding animation. The hues are vibrant and exciting, they really bring this movie to life. It's too bad there wasn't a decent story to back this thing up. I found no real interest in the two main characters, or their situation throughout the entire movie. Miguel and Tulio have little chemistry or appeal and the most interesting character (a horse with human emotions and no lines) kept catching my interest rather than the human characters. Character and plot structure are so lackluster that, if not for the bright colors, I could have easily fallen asleep amid the boring middle of the film. I think the real clincher for me on this movie would be the songs. They are so out of place and so easily forgettable that while trying to recollect a single lyric from any one of them after the movie, I came up with nothing. This is really a disappointment, considering the songs were written by Tim Rice and Elton John who did marvelous work on The Lion King. The theme may also worry some parents, the two leads lie, cheat, and steal...and usually get away with it.
My only theory as to the creation of this film was that Jeffrey Katzenberg is trying to prove to Disney that Dreamworks has just the same amount of technology behind their animation studios as the mouse ears do. But Disney films (and others like The Iron Giant) know that in order for a family animated movie to be good, it must capture the imaginations of children and maybe even some of the adults who accompany them. There is little sign of this here, the visuals are there, but the inspiration, and sense of wonder are lacking. The Road is rocky and unpaved, and certainly not filled with gold.
D+
Frankie Paiva SwpStke@aol.com http://www.homestead.com/cinemaparadise/mainpage.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews