Legend Quest: The Legend of La Nahuala

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).

I'm not going to lie. For a moment, I thought I'd enjoy this film as much as I had in the past, and while on the one hand I thought I would, since I remembered it as being much more "simple", things didn't turn out as I expected. But lets start slowly.

Visually, I have quite mixed feelings about it, because despite being a low-budget animated film and one of the first of its kind on the country (if I'm not mistaken), and having a very crude animation style, the use of color and character design aren't bad at all, at times feeling more professional than they actually are. Some characters really stand out, like El Alebrije, Xochitl, or the sugar skulls, not only in their design but also in their personality, but I'll get to that later. There is some good inspirations here and there to bring "The Day Of The Dead" more alive than ever. Sorry for the joke, lol.

Unfortunately, the rest of the characters are literally one-dimensional stereotypes. Nando just your big brother bully being annoying as hell in the entire film, Teodora is just a human Rarity (and she was even evolving in MLP), Don Andres is just a Spanish knight, La Nahuala is just evil for the sake of evil, Fray Godofredo is a priest who suffers from jokes for being fat, and the rest of the characters I didn't mention are just the typical dumb Mexicans you'd see in a story that tries to make fun of them, as if all Mexicans were like that. I understand it's a comedy, but the only jokes there are here are Mexican stereotypes or jokes about someone being beaten up or someone fat. Probably Santos or Grandma are some of the best characters in the movie but about that...

The worst part is that it's one of those movies that can't decide what it wants to be. I suppose it's part of the series essence (I haven't seen the rest of the films), since while the absurd comedy is present everywhere, they also want you to take the story seriously, as this are suppose to be about real life legends or mysteries. In fact, i would argue Santos has a surprisingly interesting arc that could have been more interesting. However, due to the forced comedy decisions, this "sad and serious" part only lasts for 2 seconds. And thats just one example. Characters like Xotichlt imo seems that they were designed for a different plot both in terms of style and personality, for how much they clash with the rest of the movie.

However that kind of saves the movie, because while the first half is honestly... cringe material... the other half while still not very great, it shows the most creativity out of these artists and ofc the director. The story kind of goes in circles here, and it makes no sense that with what it cost Leo to get in, Grandma and Nanny arrived at were the Nahuala was in seconds. However the art direction is very beautiful here, and some jokes felt a bit refreshing and genius. On top of that the chemistry between Alebrije and Don Andres was perfect, possibly the best part of the film. Feels like this part of the movie was made by a different team? Did this part took the most time? Did anyone in the studio faint out of cringe that they wanted to make something different? Do i really care...? Idk.

Although its still not perfect like i said, there is some animation errors were after an scene, the screen remains freezed without anything going on... The movie really feels half baked in a lot of aspects... And there is not a lot of The Day Of The Dead going on in the movie if we think about it, minus for giving subtle context. Ofc i wouldnt gonna compare it with Coco from Pixar, that would be unfair, but something more related to it would had been nice to see.

Even though this movie feels really amateur in a lot of ways, i do admit that it still has its own charm, in a very "raw" way. Almost like their flaws make them what it is. However i cannot forgive the movie for all the annoying stereotypes and the underused plot and characters, as they had potential. Even as an indie movie it fails, as around the same time i seen this we had "The Secret Of Kells" which destroys this, and both were released on the cinema so its not like it was free to watch. We must be more critical.

I still would recommend this movie, but... with some caution. I dont like it very much so this could be considered an "unnostalgic review", but the potential is there, so maybe the sequels could improve on their ideas? Only time would tell.

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 like the movie a lot. It really outlines some of the traditions in Puebla. It mixes mystical with laugh. Very good for kids, not violent, a little scary. But when you are seeing the movie, is like you are getting transported in time. When it gets translated to English, I recommend to see it. I love the Veracruz character, it makes the movie a little humor spicy. On the other hand, mixes the Spaniard system of beliefs with the native Mexican way of exorcism, and combined they achieve a common objective in the fight against evil. There are some peculiarities in the film which will remote you also to your childhood and your family relations. Enjoy.

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.