by Emily Maesar, TVJawn Senior Editor

There was something in the air in 2000. I mean, that’s kind of an understatement given everything, but I mean specifically in the animated, children’s film space. We had The Tigger Movie, Dinosaur, Titan A.E., Chicken Run, Pokémon: The Movie 2000, The Digimon Movie, a barrage of straight-to-video sequels, and the true mind meld across American animation studios: The Emperor's New Groove and The Road to El Dorado.

All of these films, at least the American ones, exist directly in the post Disney Renaissance era. The Disney Renaissance, which is widely considered to be 1989-1999, was a decade of banger after banger from the House of the Mouse, with very few duds in the mix. This era is why Disney still has a chokehold on children’s animation in America and why everything else in that space is often compared to it. Including DreamWorks Animation, largely considered Disney’s closest competitor.

DreamWorks Animation was founded in 1994 (under the name DreamWorks SKG) by director Steven Spielberg, former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg, and music exec David Geffen. Spielberg already had an animation studio with Amblinmation, which eventually closed in 1997. DreamWorks took on all the animators, a thing they’d actually started slowly doing in 1995 when the company was working on their first film: Balto. Despite a weak box office (decidedly not making back its budget) and pervasive comparisons to Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, Balto remains a cult classic of animated 1990s films.

And that, more or less, became the narrative of DreamWorks SKG until 2001, with the company’s release of Shrek. In 2000, however, all the animation studios were floundering to find the way forward, even Disney (though their box office was not nearly as dire as the other studios’). Like Fox Animation, a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox Animation, who put out their star-studded flop of Titan A.E.. It’s a film that I loved (uncertain if I was alone in that or not), but it was ultimately the last straw at the studio. Fox Animation would shut its doors ten days after the film’s release, and iconic director Don Bluth would leave film animation for 15 years (though it still remains his most recent animated directorial credit).

All of which leads us to DreamWorks SKG’s March release of The Road to El Dorado. It had been a film six years in the making (not unlike its Disney, December counterpart of The Emperor’s New Groove). Before DreamWorks SKG had even been announced, Katzenberg had wanted to make an animated film set in the “Age of Discovery.” There was a clash of ideals and ideas, though, in terms of scale and specific plot which made the film’s original 1999 fall release not quite possible. However, since their second film from 1998, The Prince of Egypt, was such a serious film, Katzenberg allowed his intense and grandiose ideas to be tamed and adapted into a light-hearted buddy comedy, something that had been in the mix but overshadowed by the exec’s notes and desires for the story.

And what is that story? Spanish con-men Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) and Tulio (Kevin Kline) come across a map to El Dorado, the fabled South American city of gold. They end up on the boat of Cortés, a conquistador whose expedition is often cited as the fall of the Aztec Empire. They end up on a rowboat with Cortés’ horse, Altivo, and wash ashore on a beach that contains the entrance to the city of gold. They are mistaken for gods and while they lavish in the great gifts and accommodations, they simply wish to get their share of the fortune, maybe hook up the sexy thief Chel (Rosie Perez), and get home to Spain. However, the high priest Tzekel-Kan (Armand Assante) calls their bluff and aims to bring the conquistador to El Dorado’s doorstep. The duo have to make a choice to save the city and leave all their treasure behind, or risk the death of El Dorado, its people, and themselves. Obviously, it’s a kid’s movie—so they manage to save the city and escape. There’s no gold for them in the end, but they’re rich in friendship!

The Road to El Dorado is a lot of things to a lot of people. It was a box office failure, making just over $74 million on a $94 million budget. It has pretty mixed reviews, described by Michael Wilmington at the Chicago Tribune as, “fun to watch in ways that most recent cartoons aren't,” but “not emotional enough.” The animation is often cited as being wonderful, but that the two leads are just too similar with only hair color and accent to tell them apart—even having a similar pattern of speech. Also, there’s the music. Written by Elton John and Tim Rice (John also acts as the Narrator), the songs are often described as fun but, compared to their work on The Lion King six years earlier, they feel a bit flat.

Now, as a lover of El Dorado in my childhood, I’m here to say that none of that ever mattered to me. While I’d forgotten it was a musical, largely because so few animated films that aren’t Disney ever tried, I think it’s really catchy and really allows for the levity that DreamWorks wanted to imbue into the film. The animation is beautiful and while Miguel and Tulio do feel very similar, I actually think it makes sense. They’re best friends who seem to truly only have each other. It tracks to me, especially as an adult, that they’d be quite similar. Besides, for kids, hair color is kind of the only thing that really matters. As there’s no accounting for the bisexual, polyamorous adults who grew up watching the interactions between the three leads. A real Challengers for the millennium.

However, as you might imagine, the film was also strongly disliked by many Indigenous rights organizations. While the society of El Dorado isn’t technically named as any Central or South American society… it's very clear that it’s pulling from Aztec culture. Especially as we understood it in the late 1990s. A lot of criticism has been placed on a few choice things, like Chel being a more of a sex object than a character (something I actually don’t agree with), having white characters save the people of El Dorado from the “barbarism of human sacrifice,” and having an indigenous character work with Cortés (both of which are large aspects of the film and are bad).

The Road to El Dorado is nowhere near a perfect film, but it’s beautifully animated and, largely because of GIF and meme culture, it has remained in the hearts of many (mostly millennials, but who’s counting). It has endured for 25 years, after all, and I think it will likely continue to do so. The characters are iconic and, despite its commercial failure, you can see the bones of what DreamWorks Animation would eventually grow into with its comedy and character dynamics. But even beyond the company itself, you can see how the things that work in El Dorado worked in many films, animated or live action, for the quarter century after its release. Maybe it wasn’t the actual creation point for these things, but there’s no discounting its place among the earliest of those beloved films.

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