Review of The Road to El Dorado (2000) by Linttaflamingo — 18 Mar 2018

Genuinely surprised that this is considered one of the bad Dreamworks films.

The Road To El Dorado is not perfect, but it's charming. I thought the first 20 minutes were somewhat draggy and the backgrounds were kind of bland, but immediately when the main characters Miguel and Tulio actually get to El Dorado, the movie picks up a lot. The environment becomes colorful and beautifully detailed, the soundtrack is awesome and I was genuinely interested in everything.

Though to be honest, the story is kind of bad. Once the characters get to El Dorado, the goal they set pretty much breaks the feeling of progressive plot movement because the characters basically just tell how this movie is going to end. Almost everything that actually happens in the El Dorado place feels like filler. It's not bad filler, it's very entertaining and charming to look at, but it's nonetheless filler. The only thing that has effect in anything is when the movie establishes the villain, who by the way was pretty useless in the end. And eventually when the third act kicks in, the movie isn't really even trying to build tension, and instead just rushes the ending and then just f*cks off. It really left me scratching my head and ass like "that's it?".

None of this means that the movie is awful though. I really did enjoy it even though it has some flaws. The animation was very good, even though a bit weird from time to time. Especially in the last ten minutes where there was a weird blend of CGI and traditional that didn't go well together, but overall not a big problem. The characters were pretty nice, except the horse that was just pointless and retarded, and the villain that couldn't do anything. And the songs were really catchy. Almost everything has enough redeeming qualities to outweigh the flaws, even though there clearly are some.