Legend Quest: The Legend of La Nahuala

I went today to see this movie, i didn't know what to expect, since i had not seen any publicity, yet it surprised me, the animations were OK, since they are not the best cartoons ever, but definitely you will be happy to see them as a well-built Mexican characters, however it combines perfectly 2D and 3D animation, the story is great, it knows how to appreciate all our legends and our history, there parts where you will jump of your seat, but after wards you will laugh, there are jokes with double meaning, so both children and adults can laugh, the environment, feels like if your were really there, so many of our traditions, i think there should be more movies of this kind, we should support our Mexican animated movies, instead of spending our money seeing worthless American animated movies ("vacas vaqueras", "tierra de osos", etc.) We should not expect the Mexican movies to be like them, colorful but bored.

The movie represents a magic world of Puebla, Mexico about 1700. It is full of colors and some of the most important buildings of the city appear.

The film is Plenty of Mexican symbols and folklore. It makes the film quite interesting and different.

The legend can be little bit scary for small kids because touches some of the black legends of Mexico. However is not so bad.

The actors who lend their voices make a very interesting performances, almost all of them are very well recognized.

Special mention for the music, which is delicious.

I am afraid that not Mexicans won't completely understand it and therefore won't enjoy fully the film, nevertheless, it should be seen, because it will give the opportunity to learn a little bit more about Mexico in a nice way.

I really enjoyed this movie so much that i can't keep writing without stating this in the 1st place: The most terrible flaw of this film is its lousy animation, despise its huge budget, which you can appreciate compared to most Mexican -dare i say Latin American?- animated features, the film still fails big time when compared to world animation standards -like US' or Japan's- or whatever you're used to watch. Being that said, everything else about this film is pure magic, but let's start with the storyline (loosely based in an horror legend from the state of Puebla in Mexico) it's smart and fun, plus it has a few twists and connections that makes it really enjoyable, it has some annoying segments, like the "contest" one, near the end, but just when you were starting to get bored, the movie happily ends, so the run-time of the film is perfect. Characters are terribly fun and eye-candy (you gotta love the fat lady from the bakery and her silly dog) plus characterization and vocal voice from the actors make it just perfect. Music is good, yet not my cup of tea, it's a strange blend of your everyday symphonic soundtrack, with traditional wind bands heard all over Mexico and folklore tunes. Did I mention the lovely representation of architectural style of the city? You just have to check some pictures of Puebla on the internet to see how accurate they are. In short the movie is fun and quite a pleasure to watch, i laughed a lot more than with other supposedly triple A features from the season and is to date, one of my favorite animated features so far!

I watched this movie a lot as a child all the time. My family owned it in DVD and me and my grandmother would watch hundred of times. So now watching it being grown up, I cant really criticize it; I just have too much happy memories of this movie, I can still recognize a lot of mistakes of the movie, mainly some aspect of story and some jokes that not always land. It feels a little bit rushed at some scenes, and you can also feel that were just going from place to place without a lot of hurry or a great threat until the end. I dont really have a problem with the animation, knowing it was done with very little money and I dont think its horrible, its just fine. The characters are the best part in my opinion, but then again, I grew up watching this movie and so I love all of them and even the parts of the story that dont work out so well, I still watch them and enjoy them. Overall I think it could have been much better storywise and I can understand perfectly why some people might not like it, but I just enjoy it so much that I always end up rewatching it again at some point and if you grew watching this movie, you probably also feel the same.

Even if it is not a state-of-the-art animation, being traditional 2D drawings, later computer-colored, the movie is funny, most of the humor being rather idiosyncratic, and portraits the city of Puebla very accurately, from the San Francisco Church to the Palafoxiana Library. The movie also shows many Mexican and Novohispan traditions, such as the "merengueros", the "balero" game, the "calaveras" (sugar candy) and the "Día de Muertos" (All Saints), everything set just 3 years before the start of the Mexican Independence War.

The production was done completely in Puebla, Mexico, and it was premiered during the Festival International de Cine de Morelia (FICM).