26. The Road to El Dorado
It’s the story of two charming and roguish swindlers and thieves, Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Migel (Kenneth Branagh), as they accidentally escape from Spain in 1519 from a botched game involving loaded dice and end up on an island that houses the secret to the city of gold, El Dorado.
As a One Piece fan I was quite surprised when they found El Dorado and it looked pretty much identical to the city of Shandora from Skypiea. It’s almost literally the same shot and build. It’s crazy.
This movie is what you call one of those experiences you have for the sake of fun. And I mean a “real” one. Most people try to excuse bad movies with nothing to say or nothing interesting about them by saying that it’s alright for them to just be dumb fun and while that’s sometimes true there’s a barometer for it that they still need to clear in order to sell it. This movie clears it. It’s just a very fun, simple, adventure movie.
First thing’s first, the song in the beginning was one I remembered despite only watching this film once when I was 8. That alone should tell you that the music is pretty good. It’s honestly surprising how good it is and when you find out that Elton John did the songs it immediately clicks a little better.
This movie also LOOKS gorgeous. It’s phenomenally animated and the colors are vibrant. It’s amazing just looking at it and imagining you’re there. It’s no wonder Miguel ended up falling in love with the city.
Of course, the fact that he does is where the conflict of the plot ends up taking a turn. The two of them end up here and are mistaken for gods by the islanders so now they need to keep up the ruse with the help of Chel (Rosie Perez), a girl who was trying to escape with something valuable and would likely have been very fucked had they not shown up.
They need to scam these people for long enough to have a boat made for them so they can escape with the gold and live like kings in Spain. There’s also a lovely war horse named Altivo, whom Frank Welker provides the grunts for, that ends up becoming one of them and it reminded me so much of Maximus from Tangled. This movie predates that one by quite a bit so I can’t help but wonder if it got some inspiration from this.
One of things that’s fairly apparent about this film is that it’s story isn’t much to write home about. It could easily be written off as fairly simple if you’re experiencing it through a wikipedia entry or something. Luckily, this film survives not only by how charming and well written all the characters and the jokes are but by how well it handles some of its familiar plot beats.
You’d think that with this plot of them being liars it’s only a matter of time before they do that scene where they get found out and everyone sulks about the lie they were told until all is forgiven. However, the interesting wrinkle here is that because there’s two of them one can genuinely fall in love with the city while the other doesn’t have to, allowing the conflict to ACTUALLY be about the two of them and the sanctity of their bond. That’s a much more interesting direction to take because those two together are the best thing about this film. Chel and Altivo are great additions to their crew as well but the two boys feel like the heart and soul of the piece, so much so that they never even really get found out by everyone.
Only two people find them out. One is Chief Tannabok (Edward James Olmos). In a scene that surprised me he just casually lets Miguel know that if he wants to stay then he can and sends him off to think about it with a quote he once said to them, “To err is human”. It’s a really lovely scene that shows you that the chief knows his true identity but doesn’t care because he knows Miguel is a good person. He’s seen him be kind to his people and values how whenever the lunatic high priest tries to kill someone or offer them up a sacrifice, he stops him. There’s no need to feel betrayed by them being revealed as liars because them posing as Gods has saved lives and made everyone happier.
The other person who figures it out is the film’s villain, the high priest Tzekel-Kan (Armand Assante). The man, as I said before, is insane. He’s constantly trying to offer up the people’s blood, wants people to be sacrificed, and is wholly devoted to the totems depicting the arrival of the Gods. He has a very slimy disposition and an admittedly pretty weak design. The only real interesting thing about him is his power to summon voodoo smoke magic things like Dr. Facilier from the Princess and the Frog. His plan of action in the climax of the film was also a little cool. Also, the way he goes out is potentially pretty dark if you want to think about what angry knights probably did to indigenous people in 1519. Try not to think too hard about torture methods of that era.
Although, that probably is another point against it. I don’t know how accurate this film is to whatever group (or even multiple of groups) it’s representing but I can’t exactly fault anyone for getting upset at yet another story where the ignorant natives mistaken two normal ass dudes for Gods. There’s a conversation to be had there but I’m certainly not well equipped to have it.
Simple story, weak villain, and problematic elements under the surface aside, the last negative thing to comment on is the fact that it ends up feeling like it could have been a pilot for a television show. Considering where it started and where it ended up I could have seen that being the case. That obviously never happened and as such it just stands alone as a fun adventure film. That’s fine but the ending really did feel weird because of how I knew there wasn’t more to come. It begins and ends with them basically right back where they started except they have two more party members. It’s like this movie was their first arc in an RPG that never finished.
So we’ve done it. We’ve found the El Dorado of Dreamworks movies. Huzzah. Let us ride off towards our next adventure with glory and hopefully more gold than our heroes did.
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09 Mar 2025 23:48 CET
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