The Road to El Dorado

The Road to El Dorado came during DreamWorks’ earlier stages, only being its 3rd feature animated film at the time. They were still at a point where they were fleshing out their identity apart from other animated studios at the time, and while Antz and The Prince of Egypt did good for them from a critical standpoint, their limited appeal and less engagement from casual audience members meant they still handled made an impact on the world just yet. While this 2000 2D animated film that seemed to follow in the footsteps of adventure comedies like The Princess Bride didn’t lead to that much of shake-up, it did release a film that grew in popularity over time. Set 1590 Spain, the film follows two con artists named Miguel and Tulio (voiced by Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline) who recently obtained a map supposedly leading to the lost city of gold, El Dorado. After accidentally getting lost at sea after stumbling into the ship of conquistador Hernán Cortés (voiced by Jim Cummings), the two miraculously find themselves on the path to the lost city. After they are taken into the city drenched in gold, the kind-hearted Chief Tannabok (voiced by Edward James Olmos) and wicked high priest Tzekel-Kan (voiced by Armand Assante) mistakenly believe the two are gods, which leads the entire city to shower them with praise, glory and all the wealth they can offer. In the middle of the biggest goldmine in history as well as pulling off one of the biggest schemes in history, the two along with the help of a handmaiden named Chel (voiced by Rosie Perez) have to work together to try and leave the city with all the gold without giving away their true identities, which are eventually discovered Tzekel-Kan, who uses his ritualistic magic in order to smite those he once thought were gods. Being an original idea only with some ties to Rudyard Kipling’s book, The Man who Would Be King, as well as being inspired by the Road to… films starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, The Road to El Dorado continued to showcase DreamWorks’ distinction nature against Disney through its more adult-centred storylines, more grounded visual style and sharper writing style that favoured witty humor against whimsical emotionally attachment, but it still wasn’t strong to win people over at the time. The film is home to some very passionate actors, some very colorful and creative imagery, and some pretty great writing to alter some obvious clichés and delivers some decent jokes, but it also suffers from a weak narrative, mostly pointless songs, and a poor handling of its physical humor in conjunction with its visuals.

The film, while still leaning towards a kid audience with its visuals, goofy characters, and crazy situations, is a straight up comedy, which hadn’t really been done from a mainstream perspective by other animated studios at the time, so you can feel what they were trying to do with this idea. As previously mentioned, the film adopts a very similar atmosphere and energy to something like The Princess Bride, where the environment and tone of the world react in a more standard grounded fashion against characters that are much more light-hearted and cartoonish in spirit. The story for this film, while nothing groundbreaking, is a good set-up for this tone, as while most of the building-blocks that lead to this singular scenario aren’t the most gripping or complex, the situation they find themselves in has a lot of comedic potential and works well with the film’s pace, characters, and style of humor. The writing for this film by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio is actually pretty good, with a lot of solid ideas for jokes, manages to play with some lame cliches in a manner that don’t take them down the expected route, and even adds in splashes of commentary surrounding the time period and location to result in an engaging film that does just feel like goofy-fun, but also has enough intelligence and comedic timing behind its script to work pretty nicely in that space. The adventure stuff is a little by-the-numbers and doesn’t result in anything that great, but it also has its fair share of fun moments, and it works to keep the audience engaged in a film that is very word-heavy with its humor. With that said, anytime the film tries to operate like an actual movie with conflicts or something of emotional impact, it doesn’t really hit that effectively. Because the film is so joke-heavy, it doesn’t really leave time for much in the sense of character development or gripping material, which results in a third act that not only contains a stale conflict that is introduced as quickly as it is tossed aside, but the resolution and final action set-piece isn’t anything remarkable

The characters work well for the scenario that the story has placed them in, as the light-hearted tone and comedic-centric atmosphere draws in the kids while the familiar actors and writing will draw in the adults. Since the film does still contain an element of heart at the centre that comes from the connection between the two leads, it keeps just enough focus on them outside of the jokes to make them an engaging duo to be around, and that can be said for some of the side characters as well. Miguel and Tulio are pretty likeable leads and Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline do a pretty good job. You can feel how skilled they are with their comedic timing as even under an animation filter, the two are able to get across distinct characters and chemistry between the other that works well in this buddy duo style adventure and while the drama never feels real, the friendship does at least. Chel is a pretty funny side character, adds a nice spark to the duo’s team dynamic, operates as essentially the ”how-to” guide for everything within El Dorado, and Rosie Perez is equally as fun in the role as the two leads, she’s a nice addition to the cast.  Tzekel-Kan acts as a pretty great bad guy for the film; with his creepy obsession with the gods along with his naturally off-putting attitude in general leads to some fun moments between the characters, his eventual descent into fall-on villain is well laid-out and he does turn legitimately creepy in this section, and Armand Assante is eating up the role in a glorious fashion. There’s even a fun exploration of religion showcase between him and the other chief, with both acting as speakers for the gods, but place their own ethics and beliefs on how their religion should operate instead of allowing the gods to dictate how they will act. It’s not delved into a lot, but it’s a nice touch.

The biggest weakness this film has is strangely enough also the element that deserves the highest praise, which is the animation. The traditional 2D animation in the movie is really good with wonderful colors, amazing environments which are well crafted in design as they are authentic to the Mexican and Mayan culture and is very fluid and allows for a lot of great expressions. While The Prince of Egypt already showed their 2D animation was something spectacular, this follow-up proved that it wasn’t just a one-time offering, it was incredibly good, maybe even a little too good in many ways. While that might seem like a strange statement, the film doesn’t really feel like it needs to be animated as it doesn’t try to utilize the art form in any manner to enhance its material. The comedy mainly comes from the writing and the way the characters interact off each other, not really from the visuals or any cartoonish antics, so it doesn’t really feel like it’s using its medium to its full advantage. Unlike some of DreamWorks’ later comedic-centred projects like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar, while those film’s might not have as strong as script, they use their animated template to their advantage, whereas this film feels more like it’s using it as a tool to get across a live-action film. Because the animation feels more realistic and grounded with its expressions and movements, the cartoony nature isn’t allowed to show itself and its hold back what could be funnier moments. This doesn’t happen with all the characters, as some of the side characters and the villains are given cartoonish expressions on occasion, but it feels particularly with the leads, that they’re more interested in making them look good-looking overlooking and acting funny. Much like with The Prince of Egypt, the comedy was the weakest part of that movie because the animation worked best in displayed dramatic expression rather than comical expression, but the film wasn’t about being funny, so the style matched the grandiose nature of the story and characters. This movie is all about comedy, and it’s clearly trying to make you laugh often, so when it doesn’t, it’s not going to be painful or even that bad, but you will notice it and see what could’ve been. Honesty, the best stuff involving the humor is in the writing and how the actors work with it, as Kline’s cynicism mixed with Branagh’s wistfulness against a deadpan delivery really works in a lot of scenes, and there is a decent amount of them too. The film’s soundtrack was done by Elton John and Time Rice, the same duo who created the music for the 1994 Disney animated film, The Lion King. For the most part, all the songs feel pretty pointless, sound more like radio tunes that play over scenes rather than numbers that advance anything and could be removed without impacting the story in any way, but in comparison to their outing in Lion King, they do fit better within this tone and style. On their own, the songs aren’t that bad and work for what they are; the instrumentals are nice, the orchestrations by Han Zimmer and John Powell are always great, and It’s Tough to Be a God does have a very catchy melody, but overall, they weren’t needed for the film.

The Road to El Dorado isn’t one for the record books even just within DreamWorks’ library, but for a simple kid’s film, it manages to leave an impact on those that were a part of that cult following and contains enough positive qualities to make it worth a viewing. Even though it didn’t do well at first, the film may have put DreamWorks on its way to slowly adopting its comedic edge so as a steppingstone, it’s still a pretty entertaining one. The actors are very likeable and very comedically talented, the animation while not always used appropriately is still very impressive for its time and visually stunning, the writing for the film is quite good, and even if not perfect, the movie has enough funny moments and memorable characters to keep people wanting to come back to it. Not a complete gold-tinted product but has enough care and polish put into it that it will shine enough for the right person.