Road to El Dorado was one of those overlooked gems of a movie that I have no idea why it wasn’t more popular. It’s beautifully animated, the voice acting is great, and even the Elton John music isn’t that annoying. I assumed that it was simply a case of bad marketing, since this was about the time that Disney came out with Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Titan AE bombed like a nuke in the theaters, effectively killing Fox Animation. But looking at Rotten Tomatoes today, it’s still not highly thought upon, which really baffles me. Admittedly, it’s not a perfect film, but it’s far better than Brother Bear or that horrible piece of crap, Shrek. It’s by far the best of the movies I’ve talked about here thus far, and the flaws the movie has are no better or worse than the flaws in other more popular films that came out later. But then I remember, these are critics saying that. They’re the same people who can’t figure out why Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was so financially successful, when they hated it so much. Anything that gives Ebert a headache is okay by me. (However, with the Road to El Dorado, I should point out that when you click on the RT Community tab on Rotten Tomatoes, the rating is like 64%. Usually you want to go by those numbers, since those are real people reviewing a movie and not a critic.) The Road to El Dorado is based around the old “Road to” movies that Bing Crosby and Bob Hope used to do. Basically about two fast-talking friends that through a series of events, end up on an adventure to a far away land, with a beautiful girl and danger is often involved. This movie is no exception. (You might have seen this trend done on Family Guy on more than a few occasions. I’m the farthest thing from an Family Guy fan, but they are usually their better episodes. That right there is about the nicest thing you‘ll hear me say about that show.)
Road to El Dorado is basically about two Spanish conmen named Tulio and Miguel, who bumble their way onboard Hernán Cortés’ ship bound for the New World. Along the way, they end up in a lifeboat with a horse (long story) and end up on a quest searching for the fabled city of El Dorado. (Akator to us Crystal Skull fans.) They find the place (accidentally of course) where thanks to the help of a curvaceous native woman named Chel (more on her later) they’re assumed to be gods. Being greedy conmen, this works wonderfully for the duo. I won’t spoil much more. Yeah, it’s about as historically accurate as 300 and the plot has been done before, but it’s like Stallone making action films: He may be in his 60s and the movies are pretty much all the same, but goddamn, I like watching him blow shit up.
The voice acting in this movie, particularly that of Kevin Kline (Tulio) and Kenneth Branagh (Miguel) is about some of the best I’ve heard in an animated movie. (I think personally, I would put The Incredibles above it, and maybe Ratatouille… But not many more.) Their rapport and the way they play off each other is classic comedy. I could fill this entire reviews of the back and forth dialogue these two have that just brings a smile to your face. One particular scene sticks out to me with the duo trapped in a rowboat (with the horse) out at sea, dying of thirst and starvation:
Miguel: Tulio, did you ever imagine it would end like this?
Tulio: [Pauses] The horse is a surprise.
Miguel: Any… regrets?
Tulio: Besides dying? Yeah. I never… had enough… Gold.
Now the animation is beautiful. It’s not exactly “Tarzan” levels of jaw-dropping, but it’s also well above “serviceable”. (For the record, I consider Disney’s Tarzan to have the best traditional animation of any movie ever. And for $150 million, it better have been!) What really shines out to me as an artist is the character designs… They actually look like they’re from South America as opposed to being just a bunch of white people colored tan. (Happens a lot more than you’d suspect. But that’s another issue for someone much smarter than me to discuss.) But one character of interest I want to bring up here: Chel.
Chel is interesting. Personality-wise, Chel is flawed. She’s as big of a con-artist as our two heroes. She’s seduces, she cheats, sets the boys against each other, AND she’s one of the heroes. She’s not a princess, and she’s probably what would be defined as an “anti-hero”. (I think Charon shares a lot of traits with her.) She’s voiced by Rosie Perez, who’s a good actress, so she kinda rounds out the dynamics of the two heroes. Visually though I believe is where she shines through. Check her character design to the right. What are those things she’s got? Oh, that‘s right! Curves! She’s not exactly a 
skinny twig, y’know? When you see a lot of female cartoon characters (both animated and comic), they far too often fall into a category that I myself may be guilty of, as well. Kind of a generic female body, where the major differences between them are either the height or the bust size. Sometimes not even that. Some of the Disney Princesses or female characters from the DC Animated Universe you could probably just swap their heads around and be none the wiser. (In fact, I believe the toys have proven this.) Chel obviously doesn’t have that issue. Now, if you type in “Chel” into Google, you’re going to find a bunch of fanart of her. In fact, you’ll find more fanart of her than official artwork. Some good, some not so good… And some NSFW, so don’t do it there. (In fact, it was a bit of a struggle to find even that image of her I posted.) The only other female cartoon characters I’ve only seen this happen before with is Kim Possible’s Shego and Rescue Rangers’ Gadget. (Maybe Raven too… Dunno.) And both of those are from very popular shows, as opposed from a ten year old movie that bombed at the box office. It’s kinda odd. But then again, fanboys and fangirls really shouldn’t be examined too deeply. Just accept what is and what is not.
Clocking in at about 89 minutes, the Road to El Dorado is actually a fun movie and I’m quite baffled why it’s not more popular. If you haven’t seen it, give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleased.
I’m gonna try something a little different for next week. It won’t be a movie review. I’ll go into that soon.
This may just be me and it may not apply to you but I personally hated this movie! Just for the very simple reason that Disney as a for profit corporation took a politically insensitive racially charged topic and slapped it into there stupid cookie cutter movie format.
I say politically insensitve because if you grew up in that part of the world the history lessons of those who travelled by sea across the Atlantic who parlayed themselves as Deities then in turn enslaved, slaughtered, rape and destroyed on a genocidal level cultures thousands of years old for the simple need for wealth.
Now jump back to this trivial piece of movie excrement: You have your 2 or 3 (lets include the horse) appealing protaganist who though admittedly are morally corrupt look and act in a good natured fashion where little kids watching this movie can excuse there bad behaviour because they dont look like evil men and of course there are the main protaganist so they must be good.
Then you have your evil priest/witch doctor/ bad guy. He looks and acts the part of the villain and was intending on sacrificing the pretty native girl so our heroes had to save her and in doing so the plot line slowly turns into something where in the end they become our saviours
and benefactors and in the end should we not be grateful for the hero/es who ride in on the great mount.
I’m gonna counter that a bit. But not too much though.
It wasn’t Disney that did this one, but Dreamworks. Disney did their own take on the Mesoamerican culture with the Emperor’s New Groove. Which now that I thought about it, that was probably the reason El Dorado didn’t do all that well. Early Dreamworks films had a tendency to be pretty much copying the ideas that Disney was working on. Antz vs. A Bug’s Life, Deep Impact vs. Armageddon, Shark’s Tale vs. Finding Nemo, and a few others I can’t remember right off the top of my head. So that probably was a factor into why the movie didn’t do all that well. If I had to choose between the two, I’d choose the Emperor’s New Groove too.
As for the other issue, you’re right. I can’t argue about it. The Spanish explorers did have a tendency to be rather unsavory. (And that’s being nice about it.) But they were also portrayed as the bad guys in the movie. What they were doing was not very nice, and that was clearly established in the movie.And then there was the witch doctor priest dude in the film, which I didn’t talk to much about, because honestly… He was the weakest part of the film. As far as the heroes go, I didn’t take it as “they became El Dorado’s saviors” as much as I took it as “El Dorado became THEIR saviors.” The characters were pretty much on their way to self-destruction. They were by all means, con men and criminals, but they redeemed themselves and they discovered this redemption through the people of El Dorado. And it was bluntly stated that the Chief in the movie pretty much knew they weren’t gods, and he pretty much went along with it, because it got rid of the evil asshole priest. If anything, the con men were being played.
Like I said, the movie’s about as historically accurate as 300 was. In other words, not very. But then a lot of animated movies aren’t very historically or geographically accurate. Let’s face it, a lot of bad shit happened in the past. It’s often a challenge when making them “how accurate do you want to make it?” Make it too accurate, you end up making a depressing film. Make it not accurate enough, you end up coming across as ignorant or even insulting. It’s an odd razor’s edge. (Of course in this particular movie’s case, it bombed, so it may have been a case of the latter.) In the movie, Cortés is portrayed as this gigantic behemoth, reminding me more of Shan Yu from Mulan than the actual man himself, who was in all likelihood a short pudgy guy with scurvy. It comes down to fantasy vs. reality. I prefer fantasy, because reality sucks. But only as long as people understand that the fantasy portrayed is NOT reality. When that line get’s blurred, then there’s a problem.
As far as the movie here goes, I look at it the same way I look at the Indiana Jones movies. Temple of Doom is HORRIBLE in it’s portrayal of the Indian culture. For example, the Indian people are not these human sacrificing, monkey brain eating savages shown in the movie. They’re a rather peaceful, mostly vegetarian society. The Temple of Doom was an homage to the old serial movies of the 30′s, where they were about as politically incorrect as a movie could be. But enough people understand what India is really like to still be able to appreciate the movie for what it is. (And if they don’t then I feel sorry for their education system.) I think it’s the same for El Dorado. The plight of the Mesoamerican culture from the Spanish Conquistadors is taught in our schools, and I like to think the best of people, so I *HOPE* that people are able to see that this is far from what was reality.
In the end, I admit the movie was far from perfect, and my appreciation for it is mostly on an artistic design level. If I was to make a top ten animated movies list, it wouldn’t be on it. That’s why I did this review along with Heavy Metal and Blood:The Last Vampire… It’s silly, but I still liked it very much.
I really liked this movie: The dialogue was smart and funny, the characters were interesting and atypically heroic. It’s simply fun, but also, it has some depth in the journey (not the geographical one) tha Miguel, Tulio and Chel undergo.
By the way, I loved Chel. The first time I saw this movie, I remember being first shocked, then glad at the sight of her. And I found her to be both intelligent and loveable. I really liked how she easily saw through their god act. (Tulio :Back mortal, before we strike you with a lightning bolt! Chel: Save it for the High Priest, honey, you’re gonna need it.)
For what it’s worth, I watched this movie when I was about eleven, with my younger cousins. We’re South Anericans and didn’t find it insulting, simply because we all understood it was a cartoon, and not a realistic portrayal of its time period. Also, I liked the fact that the main characters (Miguel, Tulio an Chel) were flawed more or less deeply, but still managed to find some redemption through the influence of El Dorado’s people (I particularly enjoyed the Chief’s attitude), and I take it to be a great message for children and adults.
Well not wanting to get involved in this great big real-life historical ethics debate, I’ll just say my other half made me watch this movie, and because I am the world’s biggest (or at least I was) asshole when it comes to animated movies for kids, I sat down expecting some sugar-coated, antiseptic-smelling patronising movie for kids…
And really quite liked it. We still go “Fffft fffft fffft fffft fffft!” and do the little forked-tongue thing at each other when we’re cranky, too.
Personally….I liked the movie. The dialouge between our conmen was enough for me, and the expressions, dear lord, the expressions. Since I don’t tend to expect much historical acurracy from my children’s animated movies, I don’t worry about that point too much.
For me, all I had to do was watch/rewatch the bit surrounding the lines
“Tulio: The little voice, remember? Just imagine for a moment that you have one. Now, what would it be saying about Chel?
Miguel: Um… ”
And Miguel’s happy grin and my evening was set. And yeah, I enjoyed that Chel was not your typical chick in an animated movie, so there was that. Not much more to say than that.
I very much enjoyed this movie. “The stars are not in position for this tribute!” “Like he said. Stars… can’t do it… not today.”
There’s also the scene where they’re stranded in the rowboat and the sick gull falls on the end only to be eaten by a massive shark as they reach for it, hehe.
I LIKE THIS MOVIE