Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Starring Isabela Moner, Eugenio Derbez, Michael Pena, Eva Longoria

Directed by James Bobin

The Story:
Living in the jungles of South America, young Dora (Madelyn Miranda) grows up with her explorer parents Cole (Michael Pena) and Elena (Eva Longoria), but she doesn't really associate with other humans since her cousin Diego moved to America ten years ago.  She befriends an aloof monkey named Boots and has wild imaginative adventures with a talking map and backpack, and is constantly upbeat and positive about everything - and is eager to join her parents in the search for the fabled City of Gold, Parapata.

Ten years later, Dora (Isabela Moner) is even more excited to learn that her parents have discovered Parapata, until she learns that they're exploring it without her - and sending her to Los Angeles to go to school and spend time with kids her own age.  She's reunited with Diego (Jeff Wahlberg), who's now trying to be a normal teenager and doesn't like Dora's constant upbeat and innocent attitude that draws the laughter of his fellow classmates.  Queen bee Sammy (Madeleine Madden) doesn't like Dora's intelligence, while nerdy Randy (Nicholas Coombe) is secretly enamored with her - and when the four teens are joined together for a field trip, they find themselves kidnapped and sent to South America to find Dora's parents and Parapata.  Rescued by family friend Alejandro (Eugenio Derbez), Dora and the others investigate the Amazon and encounters several dangers along the way, all the while learning about one another and the importance of friendship and staying positive through every situation.

The Synopsis:
Obviously, I've never seen an episode of "Dora the Explorer" because a) I'm a grown male and b) I have no kids of my own, so hearing about a live action adaptation seemed like the most insane, ridiculous, absolutely worst idea ever - and I felt bad for parents who were forced to sit through this disaster with their screaming kids.  Thankfully when I got around to seeing it, I found myself to be the only one in the theater, so I could sit back and laugh at the idiocy I was about to behold.  At first, that's exactly what I found - an opening scene that was laughable and stupid, and I feared I would spend the remaining hour and forty minutes in this torture.

However, after Dora grows up and we witness the greatness that is Isabela Moner, the film takes a turn for the better, and I actually found myself quite entertained by her antics, her self-aware humor, and constant upbeat attitude.  The film balanced extremely well in offering self-defecating humor to the point where it doesn't become mean, as well as providing a thoughtful story with a well-rounded lead character, and surprisingly decent action that hearkens back to the classic "Indiana Jones" films.  "Dora" did what I thought impossible - it kept my attention, and kept me entertained.

That's not saying the film is an extraordinary feat of cinematic magic - far from it - but it did far exceed my low expectations in that respect.  The animations were rather awful (especially Boots and Swipe), the side characters offer little more than what their tropes made them to be (Diego is your typical wannabe cool kid who abandons his quirky relative; Sammy is the wannabe queen bee who knows everything; Randy is your quintessential geek who references movies and video games constantly), and basically everything Eugenio Derbez does is irritating and grating - but then again so has everything else he's done that I've seen to date (and no, I haven't seen "Instructions Not Included" yet).

But the heart and soul of the film is Isabela Moner, and she once again proves why she's one of this generation's up-and-coming actresses, a girl who excels at action ("Transformers: The Last Knight"), drama ("Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), and comedy ("Instant Family") in ways that she totally transforms herself to fit the role.  Here she plays Dora, which is no easy feat since she's been a child mainstay since 2000, and she provides the young explorer with an older wit and intelligence that she didn't have as a child, yet manages to maintain her youthful innocence in a way that doesn't come across as grating.  When she enters the real jungle of high school, she tries to keep an upbeat and positive attitude against a negative world, and even though it takes a toll on her, she refuses to change who she really is.

The film's first half is really strong with Dora's development as she adjusts to the urban jungle, and would've been an even better film if she were to remain in high school, but since this is an explorer movie, we're transported back to the wild jungles of South America where they move methodically from one moment to the next in a paint-by-numbers way that becomes repetitive (again, since this is a family/kids movie, that's a given) but not annoyingly so.  The characters all become people we begin to care for (especially Dora), and there's some important life lessons learned as well as the importance of being yourself and seeing the positive of life - something that adults (as well as kids) need to learn now more than ever.

The Summary:
Surprisingly better than I expected, "Dora and the Lost City of Gold" balances humor, heart, and adventure in a way that makes it very entertaining for adults and kids alike, a film that parents won't mind sitting through with their children as it tells an important lesson about life, delivered by another terrific performance by the young Isabela Moner.

The Score: B