The Road to El Dorado Review

While browsing Tumblr and other social media outlets I'll occasionally see internet memes from Dreamworks' animated feature The Road to El Dorado (2000). I remember enjoying it when it hit theaters 16 years ago, so it put me in the mood to see it again. The animation has aged well, and it's still an amusing animated family film. The Road to El Dorado is not quite as good as I remember, but it certainly is fun.

Con-men Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) get hold of a map to the lost City of Gold, El Dorado. After stowing away onto one of the ships of the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés (Jim Cummings), the pair escapes and eventually do find the city. There, a fanatically vicious high priest named Tzekel-Kan (Armand Assante) who has a religious fixation for human sacrifices, proclaims them to be gods in a scheme to win control of the city for himself. Meanwhile, they meet a beautiful woman named Chel (Rosie Perez) who helps them in their ruse to escape El Dorado with as much gold as possible.

I've got to give props to Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh for their roles as Miguel and Tulio. Both characters made the movie incredibly fun. The characters are experienced con artists who have well rehearsed "arguments" to distract people who catch on to their ruses, which get them out of trouble. They do this a couple of times in the movie, resulting in staged fist fights, slapping, and sword play which ultimately gives them a means of escaping. These moments are terrifically charming, and they make me wonder if Kline and Branagh were improvising these lines only to have them animated later on. I wouldn't put it past them, since both actors are very skilled and they seem to bounce off of each other magnificently; those scenes do have an improvised comedy quality to them. The characters felt a bit thin, but the actors did a remarkable job working with what they had to make them lovable.

The animation in The Road to El Dorado was pretty great. It's 2D cell animation, which was becoming a rarity then and is even more so now. The well- executed animation in this film gave it a classic feel that is a delight to watch. I remembered there being CGI monster toward the end that Tzekel-Kan had summoned, but as it turned out I was remembering it wrong; it's just a really well animated hand drawing. The animation does some creative things with the lighting and took some interesting creative liberties during some musical numbers. I can't say anything new or innovative was used in terms of the animation, but what it does is some solid, classic 2D cell animation.

It's quite annoying when an animated feature thinks it needs to include a musical number for every single bit of plot development. Yes, musical numbers can be great, but too much of them is overkill and can weaken the overall quality of the movie. The Road to El Dorado teeters on the edge of too much. The music was provided by Tim Rice, who did the musical numbers for Disney classics such as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, as well as Elton John, who provided the music for The Lion King. The music and songs in El Dorado are great, but their incorporation into the movie seemed awkward at times and unnecessary at other times. Most of the music was used to fill in a lack of dialogue during several montages. Few occasions had characters actually singing about something to move the plot forward, and when it did, it felt forced. The music was good, but the implementation didn't feel right, almost as if the producers felt an obligation to include songs for the sake of entertaining kids when the moment in the movie would have been fine without it.

The story in The Road to El Dorado wasn't exactly boring, but it was predictable. In other hands, the story might have centered more on Cortés, whose ship catches up to Tulio and Miguel in the New World. But this is a story of two pals who get caught up in events beyond their comprehension after being mistaken for gods. The story ultimately recycles a lot from The Man Who Would Be King; one likes being a god, the other doesn't. They intend to get away with as much gold as possible, but end up loving the people and try to defend them from harm from within and without the city of El Dorado. The story simply doesn't do a whole lot that you can't see coming from a ways off.

On the plus side the story doesn't suffer from one towering central figure who gets all the screen time (like many Disney animated feature films do). This liberates The Road to El Dorado for goofiness. There aren't any serious themes lurking about or uplifting lessons to learn. It's just a couple of con men in over their heads and their gal pal and a horse that sometimes is smarter than the other three put together. Since the horse doesn't speak, it's able to exploit the miming gifts of the animators. There is a moment where the two heroes and their horse are in a rowboat somewhere in the ocean off Central America. It looks like the end. Then a seabird appears, circles and lands on their boat. This is a good omen. Land must be near. Then the bird drops dead. Bad sign. Then a shark leaps out of the sea and snaps up the bird in one gulp. Piling gag on top of gag is the strategy of the film, not unlike The Emperor's New Groove. It's here for laughs, not to be profound. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously and we shouldn't either. That being said, the less you know about history, the better your chances of enjoying this movie.

The Road to El Dorado is a fun, light hearted romp of a movie that the whole family could enjoy. Most of the characters are flat, but they are in the hands of some fantastic actors who make their characters loveable. The story is hardly profound, deep, or innovative, but it isn't trying to be. It's just here to entertain and create a few laughs. It's a decent enough movie, but I would have thought it would have been forgotten eventually if not for the fact that humorous internet memes keep popping up here and there. It's a fun movie to look up and watch every once a blue moon or so, but unless you have kids that really love this sort of movie, it's probably not worth owning.

The Road to El Dorado took a number of creative liberties in their interpretation of historical events in order to tell a fun story. What are some other ridiculously misrepresented historical events depicted in movies in the effort to tell a fun story? There are good ones out there, right? Comment below and let me know!

Movie Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Generally, when a non-movie media become popular some Einstein in Hollywood thinks there needs to be a movie based off of it. These have varying degrees of success. Movies based on books usually do okay; comic books tend to be hit or miss; and TV show movies tend to be pretty bad. They have yet to make a good movie based on a video game, with the worst probably being the Super Mario Bros. movie (1993). Disney had some success with making Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl(2003) which was based on the Disneyland attraction. Evidently, Disney thought that with the success thatPirates of the Caribbean brought them, a similar production based on a long running video game series would be good idea.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) is set in a romanticized ancient Persia. In the prologue, King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) adopts an orphaned street urchin, Dastan, to rear along with his other sons. King Sharaman thought Dastan was worthy of becoming nobility because Dastan defended another boy who was being beaten and then escaped by running around on rooftops. Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) grows to become a reputed warrior and prince. After receiving information that the Holy City of Alamut is supplying weapons to the enemies of Persia, Dastan’s adoptive brothers Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) and Tus (Richard Coyle) prepare to attack the city. While attacking the city, Dastan comes into possession of a strange dagger. King Sharaman stops the attack and arranged for the marriage of Tus to Alamut’s princess, Tamina (Gemma Arterton). Dastan is later framed for the mysterious murder of King Sharaman. Dastan escapes with Princess Tamina who tells him about the dagger’s power to send its wielder back in time by a few seconds. Dastan and Tamina set out to discover who is behind the false rumors about Alamut, the murder of King Sharaman, who is after the time-altering dagger and why.

Similar to Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is full of silly characters, over the top action scenes, and special effects. The only Prince of Persia game I’ve ever played was in 1989 on an Apple II computer. The storyline there wasn’t any more complicated than that of Super Mario Bros. game in 1985: save the princess. Other Prince of Persia games have been released, but I don’t know how the movie compares, as I have never played the more recent ones.

Dastan is a painfully generic hero character. He’s inherently good and incorruptible; he isn’t challenged by moral dilemmas, he just does the right thing because he’s good. This makes him very uninteresting. He’s also a carbon copy of every Persian hero to ever grace the silver screen; Disney’sAladdin (1992) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940) come to mind. He’s really not any different at the end of the movie than he is at the beginning. He’s just boring.

Tamina drove me nuts! There’s hardly a single line that she speaks to Dastan that isn’t somehow insulting, demeaning, or challenging of his capabilities or competence. She was bratty, untrusting of anyone, and would stab Dastan in the back at her earliest convenience. Why on earth were they in love by the end of the movie!? I would have tied her to a cactus half way through the movie and left her for dead. The romantic interest between Dastan and Tamina had no basis or logic behind it. The meager romance was included for the sake of having romantic scenes in the movie. Towards the climax of the movie Dastan has Tamina by the arm over a cliff, keeping her from falling to her death. I actually shouted at Dastan to just let go and put her out of his misery. She is pretty, but I’d like to think there should be more requirements to being a princess than just being pretty. Tamina is one of the worst damsels in distresses I’ve ever seen.

The action scenes were rather confusing. A lot of the movie was filmed in front of a green screen. The backgrounds occasionally didn’t match up with the movements of the camera very well, which gave the viewer a vague sense of space. On top of this the camera was often doing close shots of the actors fighting. This gave you a good sense that something was happening, but not a good sense of what was happening. Yes they are fighting, but what is it they are doing and who is winning? I felt like I should be on the edge of my seat, but I wasn’t sure why since I couldn’t tell what was actually going on.

At one point, Dastan is sinking in huge sinkhole of sand. I’m not really sure how he got there and it certainly doesn’t show how he got out. One moment he’s in the sinkhole, the next moment he’s on this cascading waterfall of sand tumbling down towards a cliff. It doesn’t show Dastan falling through the sinkhole and onto the sand-waterfall; it doesn’t show him escaping the sinkhole only to fall again into the sand-waterfall. This is more an issue of bad editing than confusing action scenes.

Not only were the characters uninteresting and shallow, but I wasn’t really sure what they were fighting for. Sure, keep the Dagger of Time away from the evil Uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley), but what happens if he gets it? They could just reset time they way they want it. No one has a risk of dying; they just go back in time a few seconds and prevent the death. They do this several times in the movie. So, if you can just correct anything with the dagger, who cares of Nazim becomes King of the Persian Empire? Who cares if anyone dies? It can just be corrected.

Disney seemed to be trying to make another swashbuckler action movie with Prince of Persia, but the movie just ended up being really underdeveloped and shoddily done. If you look at it in the context of being a very simple fairy tale with some over the top action scenes, it becomes slightly more palatable. The movie is also such light viewing that you could put it on as background noise while cleaning the house, catch glimpses once in a while, and still not miss anything. It’s a pretty clean movie, too. It would be alright for a family movie night with kids, but really there are much better movies you can watch as a family.