The Road
To El Dorado
Directed
by Bibo Bergeron, Will Finn, Don Paul, and David Silverman
Written
by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio
Starring
Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline, Edward James Olmos, Rosie Perez, and Armand
Assante
89
minutes. Rated PG. Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1. 2000.
Despite DreamWorks' boldness in venturing into a territory that was, until
a couple years ago, the exclusive property of Disney, they're just not
putting their best foot forward.
What
am I talking about? The animated musical. Since Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs, Disney has been churning out one animated musical after another.
With The Little Mermaid, they basically re-invented the genre they
had created in the first place, paving the way for films such as Aladdin
and
Beauty
and the Beast. In 1998, DreamWorks did what until then had only been
accomplished by Disney: release a popular and successful animated musical
-- The Prince of Egypt.
And
while I like that film a lot, and while I like the music from that
film a lot, it falls short of such greats as The Little Mermaid
or Beauty and the Beast. Where are the enormous song and dance numbers,
a la "Under the Sea," or "Be Our Guest"? That's what's fun about
musicals -- the spectacle, the dancing, the vibrancy! Look at live action
hits such as West Side Story. It succeeds because it's big, it's
fun, it's in your face, and it's alive. That's what makes it such
a fun and interesting genre! And the possibilities in animated musicals
are unbelievable. You can have thousands of dancing fish, you can have
supperware get up and boogie, you can even have "Pink Elephants on Parade,"
as they did in Dumbo. The filmmakers are limited only by their imagination
and by what they can put down on paper.
Now,
while The Prince of Egypt may have been more Les Miserables
than West Side Story, that's okay. What's not okay is the 
way
DreamWorks handled The Road to El Dorado, which works out to be
more like Tarzan as far as music goes, with only one number sung
by the on-screen characters. I say, if they're going to do a musical --
go all out. Don't do a half-assed job -- which is what they did here.
Maybe
I should back up a little bit first. I did like this movie. I thought
the plot was decent, the dialogue fun, the acting good, and the animation
spectacular. There were a number of plot elements and characterization
problems that I wasn't thrilled with, and then there's the whole music
issue, but this is a solid film, nonetheless.
We have
Miguel (voiced by the decidedly non-Spanish Kenneth Branagh), and Tulio
(the equally non-Spanish Kevin Kline), two -- you guessed it -- Spanish
con men who stumble upon a map to -- and then the actual city of -- El
Dorado, the fabled city of gold. They plan to plunder the city and escape
back to Spain with their booty, a plan that is complicated when the natives
mistake the two Spaniards for gods.
The story
and the dialogue are pretty good, and most of the characters are nicely
developed. The exception to the nicely developed characters is Chel, an
otherwise
nicely developed native woman voiced by Rosie Perez. Her character, even
though she's designed to be a love interest for Tulio, has basically no
redeeming qualities (other than the ones immediately apparent). She's a
thief and a liar and a slut -- not the usual heroine in an animated adventure
that, for all intents and purposes, is aimed at kids (indeed, Chel's outfit
-- not a very modest one -- was redesigned as so not to earn the film a
PG-13 rating).
There
are plot problems, also, most of which I can't go into without spoiling
the ending of the film. Suffice it to say, things between 
Miguel
and Tulio are not resolved in a fashion that is satisfying to me. Miguel
winds up getting the short end of the stick all around, and it would have
been a simple matter to rework the climax in order to get everyone what
they deserved. The way it's done, it's awkward, and not terribly satisfying.
The animation,
as with The Prince of Egypt, is fantastic. I'm a little confused
as to why the chose not to go with a wider screen (Panavision -- a 2.35:1
ratio -- offers more dramatic potential and visual spectacle than Academy
Flat -- 1.85:1 -- especially for a film like this), but the sweeping vistas
are beautiful, the action sequences are fast-paced, well-edited, and stunningly
drawn (or rendered, as the case may be), and the expressions on the characters
faces are perfect. As for the characters voices...well, the two
leads are obviously not Spanish, and the cast that voices the natives
(Armand Assante, Rosie Perez, and Edward James Olmos) are obviously
not Native American. It's a bit jarring at times, especially with Branagh's
British accent and with Olmos' surprisingly American accent 
(I
was actually surprised to see that it was Olmos -- it did not
at all sound like the same man who growled "[they arrested me because]
I look like my name is Roberto Mendoza...and I'm coming to rob your house"
on TV's The West Wing), but it didn't bother me that much. The cast
is talented, and they do a good job here -- that's what's important.
And then
there's the music. Now, I like a lot of Elton John's stuff, but the music
in this film is awful. I mean really terrible. And as I mentioned
above, there's only one song sung by the characters in the film -- "It's
Tough to be a God." This song hints at greatness, but it falls short. The
animation in the sequence is creative and interesting -- if they'd just
taken this number, cranked it up a notch (as far as the dancing and choreography,
and as far as the actual music -- the brass section, for instance, could
have been a whole lot more active), and applied that to the rest of the
film, then you would have had a kick-ass, rollicking good musical on your
hands. Or they could have gone the other way, and made this simply an animated
film -- not a musical. It certainly worked for The Iron Giant,
one of the best films of 1999, and perhaps one of the greatest animated
films ever made.
But that's
this film. Hints at, reaches for, strives to achieve -- but ultimately
fails to accomplish -- greatness. This is a good movie, for sure. But it's
a frustrating one too, knowing that it could have been so much better.
Bottom line: Good. But it could have been great.
My grade:
B
My advice:
Worth seeing in the theatre, but I'd suggest a matinee.
Get the movie
poster!
