The topic of this page has a wikia of its own: The Road to El Dorado.
- “They came for the gold. They stayed for the adventure.”
- ―Tagline
The Road to El Dorado (also known as El Dorado) is a 2000 American traditionally-animated musical adventure comedy film directed by Eric "Bibo" Bergeron and Don Paul, with additional sequences by Will Finn and David Silverman, starring Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, and Rosie Perez, and produced by DreamWorks and univeral. The soundtrack features songs by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice, as well as a score by composer Hans Zimmer.
The movie begins in the 16th-century Seville, Spain, and tells about two men named Tulio and Miguel. During a dice game using loaded dice, they win a map that supposedly shows the location of El Dorado, the legendary city of gold in the New World. However, their cheating is soon discovered and as a result, they end up as stowaways on Hernan Cortes' fleet to conquer Mexico. They are discovered but manage to escape in a boat with Cortes' prized war horse and eventually discover the hidden city of El Dorado, where they are mistaken for gods. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb.
Synopsis[]
Two con-men, Tulio and Miguel, get hold of a map to the lost City of Gold, El Dorado. After stowing away onto one of the ships of the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes, the pair escapes and eventually do find the city. There, a priest proclaims them to be gods in a scheme to win control of the city for himself. Meanwhile, they meet a beautiful girl named Chel who helps them in their ruse.
Plot[]
In Spain 1519, two Spanish con-men, Tulio and Miguel win a map to the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado, in a rigged gambling match (though ironically they end up winning the map fairly). After being accused of cheating with loaded dice, the two evade capture while being chased by a bull and hide in barrels, which are shortly loaded onto one of the ships to be led by Hernan Cortes to the New World. During the trip, they are caught as stowaways but manage to break free and take a rowboat with the help of Cortes' horse, Altivo. They land at an unknown shore at the edge of Mexico, and Miguel begins to recognize landmarks stated on the map. The map leads them to a relief outside of a waterfall where a young woman approaches them, chased by a number of guards. The guards see the image of Tulio and Miguel riding Altivo as the same on the totem, and believing them to be gods, escort them and the woman under the falls and into El Dorado, truly a city made of gold.
Tulio and Miguel are brought to the city's elders, Chief Tannabok and wicked high priest Tzekel-Kan. While Tannabok warmly welcomes them to the city, Tzekel-Kan mainly sees them as a way to enhance his own standing. Tzekel-Kan also believes that with the arrival of the gods comes "The Year of the Jaguar", a year in which the city will be purged of all wicked people. Tulio and Miguel begin to argue on what to do. Everyone is convinced they are gods when as a volcano is beginning to erupt, Tulio yells at Miguel to stop, and the volcano suddenly stops. After celebrations offered by both Tannabok and Tzekel-Kan, the two are taken to private quarters along with the woman they met earlier, Chel, who has seen through their ploy but offers to help maintain it as long as they give her a share of the gold and take her with them when they leave. Tulio and Miguel tell Tannabok the next day they are only here for a visit, but will need a boat built to leave the city with the gifts the city has showered upon them.
Tannabok says it will take them at least three days to construct a vessel to carry both them and the gifts given to them by the people of El Dorado. Chel encourages Miguel to continue to explore the city while she gets close to Tulio. Miguel finds the streets empty and sees an old man being pushed by a guard, who tells him Tzekel-Kan had ordered the streets cleared to prepare for a sacrifice by the gods' orders. Miguel begins playing the guitar and begins to bond with the people. When Tzekel-Kan sees Miguel playing a ball game with the children, he demands that the gods play against the city's best players. Tulio and Miguel are clearly over-matched during the match, but Chel replaces the ball with Bibo the armadillo, allowing the two to cheat and score enough points to tie, but when Bibo rolls out of bounds, Chel accidentally throws them the wrong ball. In desperation to score the winning goal, Tulio unintentionally and unknowingly elbows Miguel in the forehead, causing a cut above his eyebrow. With assistance from Altivo, they win the game. However, when Tzekel-Kan offers to have the defeated players sacrificed, Miguel declares there is no need for sacrifices or him. While leaving, Tzekel-Kan sees the blood on Miguel's forehead and realizes that both he and Tulio are not gods.
As the boat is nearly finished, Tannabok tells Miguel that he is welcome to stay in El Dorado if he wants to. This leaves him torn with the decision; he loves the city of El Dorado, but he can't imagine life without his partner, Tulio. Meanwhile, as Tulio and Chel are negotiating on her cut of the gold, he eventually tells her he wants her to come to Spain with him. Only him. Miguel overhears their discussion and believes Tulio is abandoning him to be with Chel. As they are having their sendoff party, Tzekel-Kan conjures a giant stone jaguar to chase them through the city. Tulio and Miguel manage to outwit the stone jaguar, causing both it and Tzekel-Kan to fall into a giant whirlpool, thought to be the entrance to Xibalba, the spirit world. Tzekel-Kan comes outside El Dorado, where Cortes and his men are searching for gold. Thinking Cortes is a true god, Tzekel-Kan quickly offers to lead them to El Dorado. With their boat completed and loaded with gold, Tulio is ready to leave, but Miguel announces that he will be staying because he finds the city peaceful. As Tulio and Chel start to leave, they spot smoke on the horizon, realizing that Cortes and his men are quickly approaching the city with the help of Tzekel-Kan. To protect the city from the Spanish troops, Tulio determines they can use the boat to slam against rock formations under the waterfall path that will cave in and block access to the city. Even if it means losing all of the gold.
Putting the plan into action, the city's residents start to knock down a large statue to create a wave to propel the boat, but Tulio cannot get the sails up to give the boat enough speed to avoid the statue, even with the warriors and Tannabok holding it back with rope. Miguel forgoes his chance to stay in the city and jumps into the boat with Altivo to hoist the sails. The boat clears the statue in time, and Tulio's plan is successful; though the boat and its treasures are lost, the entrance to El Dorado is sealed for good. Tulio, Miguel, Chel, and Altivo hide as Tzekel-Kan brings Cortes and his men towards the waterfall. Once Tzekal-Kan finds out that the entrance has been blocked, an angry Cortes takes this as a lie. Cortes and his men then march away with a humiliated Tzekel-Kan in their hands. Tulio and Miguel, though disappointed they lost their treasure, take off in a different direction for a new adventure (with Chel), unaware that Altivo still wears the golden horseshoes he was outfitted with within the city.
Voice Cast[]
- Kevin Kline as Tulio
- Kenneth Branagh as Miguel
- Rosie Perez as Chel
- Jim Cummings as Hernán Cortés
- Armand Assante as Tzekel-Kan
- Edward James Olmos as Chief Tannabok
- Tobin Bell as Zaragoza
- Frank Welker as Altivo
- Campbell Morton as Bibo
- Duncan Marjoribanks as Acolyte
- Elton John as Singing Narrator
See full cast at IMDB here
Production[]
Under the working title El Dorado: City of Gold, the film was originally scheduled for release in the fall of 1999. During production, the filmmakers drew much inspiration for the characters of Miguel and Tulio from those of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road to... films. "The buddy relationship [between the duo] is the very heart of the story. They need each other because they're both pretty inept. They're opposites - Tulio is the schemer and Miguel is the dreamer. Their camaraderie adds to the adventure; you almost don't need to know where they're going or what they're after because the fun is in the journey", remarked one of the film's producers Bonne Radford. Unusually for an animated film, both Kline and Branagh recorded their lines in the same studio together, in order for the two to achieve more realistic chemistry. This proved difficult for the audio team.
In late 1996, Tim Rice and Elton John were asked to compose seven songs, which they immediately worked on. In February 1999, before the release of Tim Rice and Elton John's Aida, it was announced that ten songs have been composed for El Dorado. It was also announced that the release date has been pushed to March 2000.
The creation of the film was a challenge for the studio because DreamWorks Animation had devoted most of its creative efforts to its previous animated film, The Prince of Egypt.
Release[]
Promotional partners[]
The film had promotional backing from Burger King.
Critical reception[]
The film received mixed reviews from critics; it holds a 48% "rotten" rating out of 104 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with 50 positive reviews, making this the first DreamWorks animated film to earn a "rotten" rating; the consensus states: "Predictable story and thin characters made the movie flat." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 51 based on 29 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Paul Clinton of CNN wrote, "The animation is uninspiring and brings nothing new to the table of animation," praising the Elton John/Tim Rice songs, but noting the weak plot.
In contrast, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a thumbs up and commented that it was "bright and zesty," having enjoyed it as a simple comedic farce, while Joel Siegel, on Good Morning America, called it "solid gold," claiming the film was "paved with laughs."
Box office[]
The film earned $12,846,652 on opening weekend at #2, behind previous year's Erin Brockovichss third weekend. The film closed on June 29, 2000, after earning $50,863,742 in the United States and Canada and $25,568,985 overseas for a worldwide total of $76,432,727. Based on its total gross, The Road to El Dorado was a box office disaster, unable to recoup its $95 million budget.
Video game[]
The video game tie-in, released on PlayStation, Game Boy Color, and PC, was named Gold & Glory: The Road to El Dorado. It was developed by Planet Interactive for Game Boy Color and Revolution Software for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation.
Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado received mixed reviews Aggregating review website GameRankings and Metacritic gave the PC version 60.40%, the Game Boy Color version 59.20% and the PlayStation version 51.89% and 34/100.
Home media[]
The Road to El Dorado was released on DVD and VHS on December 12, 2000.
Trivia[]
- Tzekel-Kan's sacred book contains a picture of a man fishing from the moon, a parody of the Dreamworks logo.
- In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures (owners of the pre-2005 DreamWorks Pictures catalog) and transferred to 20th Century Fox before reverting to Universal Studios in 2018.
- In the movie, Cortes is looking for El Dorado, but in real life, it was Gonzalo Pizarro who was looking for the legendary city of gold.
- After the film was released, a series of sequels were planned (in the vein of the Shrek franchise), but later on these were scrapped after the film flopped at the box office.
- The second DreamWorks Animation's musical film, after The Prince of Egypt
- This is the first DreamWorks Animation film to be released in March.
- This is the second (or third-to-last) DreamWorks Animation traditionally animated film to be produced at their Glendale studio, the first being The Prince of Egypt.
- This is the last traditionally animated DWA film to entirely use this animation, the last two films to use this would also use computer animation.
- This is the second DreamWorks Animation film that had more than 2 directors, with the first being The Prince of Egypt.
- Tim Rice speaks about the songwriting process with Elton John for this film in his podcast Get Onto My Cloud.
- Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh also starred in Wild Wild West, in the same film Will Smith and Salma Hayek, appeared in DreamWorks animation; Smith was the voice of Oscar and Hayek was the voice of Kitty Softpaws in Puss in Boots.
- Kenneth Branagh and Rosie Perez’s first animated film.
- This is the first DreamWorks Animation film to be released in the 2000s.
- This marks the first time DreamWorks Animation skips over an entire year (that being 1999) without releasing any films.
- It was the only DreamWorks Animation film not to recover its budget until Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken in 2023. However, in the years following its release, it has developed a cult following.
Gallery[]
Promotional[]
Screenshots[]
External links[]
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