What can I say? The Road to El Dorado kept me hooked right from the very start, proving to be an amazing adventure filled with action, comedy, color, breath-taking imagery and music. After The Prince of Egypt, I wasn't too keen on another Dreamworks animated film. Don't ask me why, but Prince of Egypt just failed to reel me in. El Dorado on the other hand has restored my faith in the studio.
I'll keep this short and to the point. El Dorado seemed to deliver the goods in every aspect. The music was great and certainly enhanced the mood and scene, Tim Rice and Elton John did a fantastic job with the instrumental score. The characterisation was done quite well, and you could really sense the strong friendship that Tulio and Miguel had with one another. Chel was also a character favorite of mine, and Rosie Perez did a great job providing her voice! The artwork was also exceptionally good, with the colorful Mayan themes and designs providing an amazing backdrop for the story. Of course the film is not without its fair share of eye-candy, the special effects were excellent and Dreamworks didn't go overboard with them. The story was also a nice change. For once it wasn't the tired, rigid old formula of "good guys meet bad guys, conflict, defeat bad guys and everyone's happy". I mean..sure everyone is happy in the end...and there is the token good guy VS bad guy routine but Dreamworks seemed to mince it up somewhat and introduce all-new elements.
Surely it has its flaws, you say. Well in all honesty, I'm hard pressed coming up with any. I didn't exactly love the character design for Tulio and Miguel but that's just being incredibly petty....
All in all, The Road to El Dorado was very refreshing and a welcome change from the usual Disney-formula-based feature. As for comparisons and similarities with the "brilliance of Disney", I believe that there is no need for that talk. I ask you, why do we need more Disney? The Road to El Dorado shines in a light all of its own.
