The Road to El Dorado

What can I say? The Road to El Dorado kept me hooked right from the very start, proving to be an amazing adventure filled with action, comedy, color, breath-taking imagery and music. After The Prince of Egypt, I wasn't too keen on another Dreamworks animated film. Don't ask me why, but Prince of Egypt just failed to reel me in. El Dorado on the other hand has restored my faith in the studio.

I'll keep this short and to the point. El Dorado seemed to deliver the goods in every aspect. The music was great and certainly enhanced the mood and scene, Tim Rice and Elton John did a fantastic job with the instrumental score. The characterisation was done quite well, and you could really sense the strong friendship that Tulio and Miguel had with one another. Chel was also a character favorite of mine, and Rosie Perez did a great job providing her voice! The artwork was also exceptionally good, with the colorful Mayan themes and designs providing an amazing backdrop for the story. Of course the film is not without its fair share of eye-candy, the special effects were excellent and Dreamworks didn't go overboard with them. The story was also a nice change. For once it wasn't the tired, rigid old formula of "good guys meet bad guys, conflict, defeat bad guys and everyone's happy". I mean..sure everyone is happy in the end...and there is the token good guy VS bad guy routine but Dreamworks seemed to mince it up somewhat and introduce all-new elements.

Surely it has its flaws, you say. Well in all honesty, I'm hard pressed coming up with any. I didn't exactly love the character design for Tulio and Miguel but that's just being incredibly petty....

All in all, The Road to El Dorado was very refreshing and a welcome change from the usual Disney-formula-based feature. As for comparisons and similarities with the "brilliance of Disney", I believe that there is no need for that talk. I ask you, why do we need more Disney? The Road to El Dorado shines in a light all of its own.

The Road to El Dorado (2000), an animated cult film if there ever was one. It's interesting to compare this flick to Disney's The Emperor's New Groove (2000), which came out the same year. Both are traditionally animated. Both are wickedly funny. Both underperformed at the box office. While Emperor has gone on to be one of the most beloved modern Disney films, El Dorado is still only a cult film. That's a real shame, because it's a fun ride with snappy dialogue and cool characters.

If I have any complaints, then it's that the mixing of traditional animation and CG has dated badly. Most of the musical numbers are forgettable and could have been done away with. Luckily, those issues don't hurt the picture much.

I absolutely adored this movie as a teen and I still think very fondly of it as an adult. I wish they made more films like this these days, cause the adventure genre is seriously lacking.

Of course, i was missing it too, until about fifteen minutes in.

Okay -- the title is "THE ROAD TO El Dorado" Hands up, everyone with whom that rings a bell.

No?

Okay -- its stars are two fast-talking con men who get out of trouble by faking fights with each other,and who *almost* play pattycake at a point.

Still no bells ringing?

How about if i point out that, at one point, our heroes' images are briefly morphed into the faces of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby for about two frames?

Right.

This is a tribute to/animated version of those hilarious (if you're in the right frame of mind) "B" comedies starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (and Dorothy Lamour in a sarong -- does Chel look any more familiar, now?), all of which were entitled "The Road to..." somewhere or other.

Nothing in them was meant to be taken seriously, and very little in this film is.

I have to agree with a number of reviewers who say, with varying degrees of indignation, that this is not a kids' film.

Duh.

It wasn't meant to be. It was meant to ba a general-audience, PG-rated film.

WILL you people PLEASE get it through your heads that "animated" does not, necessarily, equal "kids' movie"?

Animation is just another film-making technique, to be used to make any kind of film the animator wants to make, and if you think that animation is automatically for kids, check out... oh, say... "Akira" or "Fantastic Planet" or "Heavy Metal".

"Road to El Dorado" is an excellent all-ages film, (with the caveat that is IS a PG-rated one, and that you ought to think about what you want your kids to watch) and anyone who sees anything bad or prurient in the scenes that everyone has been complaining about should take a close look at themselves...

I watched this movie with my younger brother (who is in his late teens) and we both loved it. This movie, and Titian AE, are part of an interesting new trend- animated films that appeal to teens and adults. I was stuck by how much this movie wasn't for little kids- the whole Tulio/Chel relationship notably- but since I'm not a parent, I don't have to be bothered by that. I got the impression that this movie was animated only because it is easier(ok, cheaper) to draw the elaborate settings than it would have been to constuct sets that showed as rich a setting. My only qualm with the movie is the awful musical numbers that all animated films insist on having in them- why do they all strive to be musicals? But all in all, it's a great movie. If you too find yourself drawn to such shows as Batman Beyond, you might appricate this animation that isn't geared towards small children.