Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Plot: After spending her childhood growing up in the Amazon, Dora is sent to live with relatives in Los Angeles while her parents set out in search of a mythical lost city of gold. On a class field trip, Dora and some of her new friends, including her cousin Diego, are kidnapped by mercenaries bent on discovering the city of gold for themselves. As well as using Dora as a way of persuading her parents to help them.

I went into this movie knowing very little about Dora other than it’s a kids show on Nickelodeon. I was fully expecting a movie made for kids under 7 that would be very mildly PG rated. For a kids movie it is a surprisingly adventurous and fun film. Sort of like National Treasure meets Indiana Jones only for a younger audience. Granted it’s meant for kids but the sense of adventure and suspense is surprisingly not toned down. I found myself enjoying it far more than I thought.

The movie definitely pokes fun at a lot of what is in the show. Certain things don’t always translate well from a children’s educational cartoon into a live action adventure film. One example is when Dora “breaks the fourth wall” and talks to the audience. It is very hilariously handled here. I also loved how they incorporate some of the singing aspect of the TV show without taking the film into any sort of full fledged musical numbers. Well, except for the very end but I don’t count that one because it’s during the credits).

Kudos for the casting department for finding someone who looks and acts 100% like a real life teenage Dora. The rest of the cast is also great although I have little to no knowledge about their animated counterparts but they all seemed to have a blast playing their respective characters.

I have very few complaints about this film. The CGI does seem a bit lower quality compared to most films of late. I know that an animated backpack and map are tough to make all that realistic but in a live action recreation I would have expected a more real life imagining of Boots and Swiper but that’s just me.

Overall this was a refreshing surprise of a film that I was completely expecting to take more of a path akin to its cartoon series. I’m very glad that I was wrong.

8/10

Edit to Add: Rent the Movie Here or Buy it on disc on Amazon.