The Road to El Dorado Reviews

DreamWorks' latest attempt to out-animate Disney is an often spectacular but ultimately rather tedious musical/adventure/comedy, a cross between THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING and an old Hope and Crosby picture — the "road" in the title is probably no accident. The plot, as you might expect, is standard buddy-buddy stuff. Two-bit con men Tulio (voiced by Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) win a map to the titular lost City of Gold and then get locked in the brig on a ship of the wicked Spanish explorer Cortes. Escaping by longboat and accompanied by Altivo, a horse with killer comic timing, the pair ultimately stumble into El Dorado, where they're welcomed as gods. Evil rears its expected ugly head in the form of a murderous High Priest (Armand Assante), but the duo ultimately saves the day with the help of sexy native babe Chel (a very funny Rosie Perez) and ride off in search of new adventures. The good news here is that the animation is beyond state of the art; when this movie wants you to believe that something on the screen has physical heft, be it as unassuming as a pickle barrel or as spectacular as an Incan temple, then by golly you believe it. It's also nice that the romance between Tulio and Chel involves a certain, shall we say, horizontal component (presumably as a sop to adult viewers). Unfortunately, the bad news includes at least one too many cute supporting animals, a rampaging monster sequence toward the end that makes very little plot sense and seems totally tacked on, and (most damagingly) a script that isn't nearly as funny as it thinks it is, which means that Kline and Branagh have to work way too hard. Worse, the songs by the reunited LION KING team of Elton John and Tim Rice are stunningly trite; they're so bad, in fact, that after a very short while you'll be actively dreading anything that sounds like a music cue.