Reunited with her childhood friend and cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg), Dora finds her perspective and usual skill set make her an outcast amongst her peers.
That is until a group of treasure hunters kidnap her school field trip and drop her in the middle of the jungle…
What a fun, unexpected movie.
I was too old for Dora the Explorer, and my siblings were too old to watch the original cartoon. What little I know of the show is purely through cultural osmosis.
So when this movie was coming out, it was not on my radar at all.
A pity. This movie is kinda perfect for this blog.
I try to cover a wide range of movies (and other things), but if this blog has a unifying principle it is movies that are just a shade off centre - whether that is in terms of its treatment of genre or form, or anything.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold definitely fits that profile. And a lot of its power comes from the casting of its lead.
Sometimes all it takes one piece of casting to tie a film together.
Think of Christopher Reeve as Superman, or Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, or Harrison Ford as Han Solo.
That is how significant Isabela Merced is to Dora and the Lost City of Gold.
She delivers a completely earnest, non-winking, committed performance as Dora, and manages the tricky balancing act of embodying all of Dora’s positivity in a way that feels heightened, but always with a foot in some kind of emotional truth.
Dora may approach the world with open eyes and a big smile, but this movie tests her, and Moner manages to make these moments of self-reflection totally seamless with the character’s familiar caricature.
It is hard to believe that this movie did not lead to a sequel, but as a calling card, this marks out Merced as a potential movie star.
This movie manages to have fun with the familiar elements of the show, but it ultimately feels like a validation.
It also leans into the weirdness - there is a whole scene where the characters accidentally trigger a hallucinogenic plant and turn into their cartoon selves.
There are also some funny bits of casting - watching a small monkey growl with the voice of Danny Trejo, or Benicio del Toro as the voice of Swiper the fox.
The movie feels like a variation of the same template as the Adams Family movies - juxtaposing a caricature-like character in the real world, but using that character’s lack of hypocrisy and genuineness to highlight the ridiculousness of the ‘straight world’.
It is not as satirical as those movies but it is very funny.
The rest of the cast are solid - it is a tough gig playing the straight man, and Jeff Wahlberg, Madeleine Madden, and Nicholas Coombe around Merced do a good job.
Eugenio Derbez has some good moments as the duplicitous Alejandro.
Sadly the actor I was excited to see - Temuera Morrison - does not get a lot to do. Morrison plays one of the film’s villains but his lunch is eaten/swiped by Swiper.
The movie feels quietly subversive at the edges - there are scenes of un-subtitled Spanish, and most of Dora’s nuggets about the lost city offer little jabs at colonialism, including one gag where all the kids try to figure out which European power was responsible for a specific act.
This is one of those movies where certain elements are so strong - Merced’s Dora and her experience in the city - that it is almost irrelevant what the rest of the movie is like.
The quest is not particularly memorable but it does lead to some fun set-pieces and examples of Dora and the other characters’ talents and knowledge.
These feel like minor quibbles.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a really good movie, and Merced is terrific in the lead.
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