My Review of The Road to El Dorado · 12:42am Aug 31st, 2021
Rating Scale:
12/10—a complete masterpiece; flawless and outstanding
11/10—Excellent, near-perfect film
10/10—the standard rating; awesome film with a couple of flaws
9/10—a wonderful film with several flaws
8/10–a great film with numerous flaws but not enough to ruin it
7/10—a fun and entertaining movie; not great but still enjoyable
6/10—a slightly above average film; it is something I might watch again
5/10—mediocre movie; not awful but not great either
4/10—a below average film; it could have been much better
3/10—a bad film; poorly written and poorly executed
2/10—a very bad movie; the few good things in the movie overshadowed by the bad things
1/10—a terrible movie; a total waste of time
0/10—a worthless piece of abomination; should have never been made
Hello, hello, hello, dear friends and jesters! This is yours truly back with another movie review for tonight! I have yet another excellent DreamWorks film that likewise deserves more recognition and praise: The Road to El Dorado! To be honest, I haven’t watched this movie for the longest time and only watched it once since Elementary school. I do remember watching the trailers and the promotions for this film when I was a kid. Ever since those times, I’ve never been able to watch it or to actually get the DVD thereof like I had for dozens of other films from childhood. Thankfully, I have managed to watch it for the second time last week online.
So now that I have a full recollection of everything that happened in this movie, I must say that this was absolutely amazing and enjoyable as I remembered. It has great voice acting, an intriguing story, awesome characters, beautiful animation, and a well-written plot.
The main characters are some of the most hilarious and interesting characters I’ve ever seen in all of DreamWorks. Miguel and Tulio are both funny and entertaining at the same time. We see these professional conmen trying to do every trick and performance they can think of to scam people and get their money. It wasn’t until they are captured and taken away by the guards that made way for their life-changing journey.
With Altivo the horse by their side, they escaped captivity and discovered a city called El Dorado where all the inhabitants thereof saw them and deemed them as gods in human form. Thus, the duo found a way to claim all the gold through trickery and deception.
This type of story was really fascinating and hooked my interest to see where things would go. I especially loved the character designs, the interactions, and the development that unfolded. Both Miguel and Tulio had to learn the lesson of truth, sacrifice, and selflessness through it all which eventually resulted in conflict. That was well-executed in my opinion.
Kenneth Branagh was great as Miguel and so was Kevin Kline for the role of Tulio. Props also to Frank Welker for voicing horse noises for Altivo. I even liked Chel as a character as well; props to Rosie Perez for voicing such a beautiful tritagonist.
Tzekel-Kan was an awesome antagonist for this film. He is portrayed as a charismatic, eloquent, manipulative, sinister high priest who looked upon humans as vile and disgusting who needed to be eliminated. Thus, he utilized all sorts of magic to spring forth his creation for his dark purposes. Armand Assante was a perfect choice for this character as he gave that silky, evil voice.
That whole scene with the giant stone jaguar is my favorite part of the movie. Brilliantly well-drawn and wonderfully enjoyable.
Overall, this whole film was a delight to watch for the second time, and I would highly recommend this to those who love DreamWorks films. I will rate this a 10/10!
Peace!
Greed leads to destruction.
Armand Assante’s work in this very movie was the main reason for why I envisioned him as the voice of the villain character I had in mind for an Equestria Girls story. He gave such an outstanding performance, and I’m surprised he didn’t decide to tackle family-friendly works more often.
Ok, so I never watched this movie until one day at dinner, my sister and I found this movie in Netflix and my god, it was so hilarious! The amount of memes this movie left us
. The voice acting was so spot on. Really underrated movie in my opinion. Which makes me think, if only people had watched 2d movies more, maybe we would have more movies on this beautiful style.
For some reason Altivo reminds me a little of Maximus from Tangled, though they have different personalities. I wonder if they took that character. Fun fact, Altivo means haughty in spanish.
One thing I find weird though is that El Dorado is a legendary city ancient spaniards believed it to be in South America, and the people who inhabited it were the Muisca, a group of indigenous people in Colombia. And yet, they seem to have gone to a mixture of Maya, Aztec (these last two are Central American) and Inca culture. And the fact they used Hernán Cortés (a real Spanish conquerer) in this movie... I guess it commits the same sins as Pocahontas when it comes to the indigenous peoples
(Chel is way more sexualized than Pocahontas and that makes me uncomfortable, considering what happened in the Spanish colonies. No hate on the character though, she´s awesome). Despite these mistakes, I still enjoyed the movie 
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Lastly, as a spaniard, I appreciate Tulio´s and Miguel´s characters. Spanish characters are not really common in American media, so it´s always good to see someone of your nationality and culture in there
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So those are my thoughts!
Out of curiosity…did you know that Dreamworks was bought by Universal Pictures a few years ago?
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I think so. Why?
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🤷🏻♂️I was just wondering.
Personally, I think Universal and Dreamworks make an excellent combination. The only thing I hope for is that Universal would always make wise of their newfound purchase, mainly since they’ve had a history of downs here and there.