Dora And The Lost City of Gold SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Review

We live in an age where pretty much every animated show is getting a movie of some sort be it a theatrical film or one that's straight to TV. Well the latest one has just been released and i'm going to be honest I wasn't that big of a fan of Dora The Explorer growing it was just after my time like I was around ten years old when it first started showing but i'll admit even I was both excited and nervous when a live action movie was announced and so here is my review of Dora And The Lost City of Gold and yes there will be spoilers.

The plot of this movie is Dora's parents want her to have a normal childhood and so they send her to high school only then they get kidnapped and it's up to Dora and some school friends along with her cousin Diego and friends Boots to rescue them. The whole sending a kid to high school in order to make them more sociable is a tired as hell idea it was barely clever when Mean Girls did it over ten years ago but the actual story is semi entertaining at best.

Starring in this film is Isabela Moner as Dora , Eugenio Derbez as Alejandro Gutierrez , Michael Peña as Cole , Eva Longoria as Elena , Jeff Wahlberg as Diego , Nicholas Coombe as Randy , Madeleine Madden as Sammy , Temuera Morrison as Powell , Adriana Barraza as Abuelita Valerie , Pia Miller as Mami , Benicio del Toro as Swiper the Fox and an utterly wasted Danny Trejo as Boots the Monkey.

Now I know what your thinking Danny Trejo as Boots that sounds awesome and on paper you'd be right. In reality tho not so much because for the vast majority of the film Boots is just making monkey noises which could have been played by anyone and he gets one line of dialog which even then could have done by any other actor. As for the rest of the actors there ok at best there's no one that I hated in the film but no one really stands out either.

As you'll all know this movie is an adaptation of Dora The Explorer and from what I remember of the show this movie bears very little resemblance to the show. For starters I don't think there was any episodes where Dora's parents went missing and she had to rescue them and I don't think that Dora lived in the jungle either but there's a chance that i'm wrong on that front since I haven't seen the show in years. 

If you thought that the CGI in the new Sonic movie looked bad he looks great when compared to the CGI characters in this movie. I don't know why it's hard to CGI animators to make hand drawn characters look good in CGI but so few get it right and this is a case of where they got it badly wrong because Swiper , Boots , the backpack and the map all look terrible and dare I say it they look like nightmare fuel.

Can You Say SPOILERS Start Here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Swiper who was the series main bad guy is in this film not only more of a henchman since he does kind of work for the main bad guy he's also more played for laughs. Which I do kind of get since the original show was aimed more towards little kids but even so people going into the movie are most likely going into it expecting to not only see him be the main bad guy but also be in the film more and they'll be disappointed on both accounts.

Now what I did like was that they did find away to include both the talking backpack and map from the original show which was something that I would have been fine with if they didn't include those characters. That said tho they look hideous ion this movie but how they did include them was really fun and inventive they include them in dream sequences which are honestly more true to the show then this movie is.

I don't get why most movies think that the only issue kids have is being the new kid in school it's one the oldest cliches out there. It's something which from what I remember doesn't really fit in well with the Dora universe considering they did a whole show where she moves to the city but even so they kept it true to Dora I don't want to see Dora struggling in high school I want to see her in the jungle but nope we have to get something that is overdone and something that doesn't work at all.

Now I did some basic research into this film hence how I know what I know about the film but what I don't know is if the character of Dora was well represented. Just of this movie alone i'd say the answer is yes but even that's just because I can't remember what she was like in the show. I will say that having Dora being forced to go on quest to save her parents is an interesting an idea and seeing her having to struggle with not only getting to know these kids but also trying to get them back safely is an interesting idea but the film does nothing with them.

There are alot of jokes in this film and shockingly all of them are jokes about the show itself and i'm not sure how I feel about that because it does feel like we're laughing at the show when we should be laughing at it. That said tho the best joke in the whole film is also the one that gets done over and over again and that's the fact that in the show Dora breaks the fourth wall by asking the audience if they can say certain words which they do in this movie and what made it funny the first time is Michael Peña's reaction because he just turns to his wife and says "it's just a phase" that was funny but they bring it back all the time.

Can You Say SPOILERS End Here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Overall this is a harmless movie and considering it was rumoured that Micheal Bay was producing this film it could have turned out a lot , lot , lot , lot worse then what we got and so the movie gets a 5 out 10 from me.