Living in the best manicured jungle Hollywood can invent, Dora is haunted by her bilingual escapism and growing schizophrenia. Good thing, she lives in Peruzilombia, because in the United States, I think she’d be highly medicated. Early on, a young Dora (Madelyn Miranda) finds a meal to her liking. She turns directly to the camera and questions, “Can you say ‘delicioso?’ “ Dad (Michael Peña) asks who she’s talking to. Mom (Eva Longoria) wonders if this is a phase she’ll grow out of.
I laughed myself silly. If the film is going to be a self-referential parody, this could be my Lost City of Gold … or at least an experience as good as The Brady Bunch Movie. Alas, the live remake of an educational cartoon for children about a kindergarten latchkey Spanish tutor didn’t give itself room to be the commentary it needed to be. Dora’s bizarre world where the six-year-old child is constantly left to walk the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu is not one we get to explore all that much. This is a true shame, seeing as Dora being accompanied by Boots the Monkey, Swiper Fox, a talking map, and a talking backpack seems rife for comedy.
Well … you walk a fine line when you pick a childhood icon as your subject matter, especially one with the depth of a bilingual laundry tag. The biggest problem with Dora and the Lost City of Gold is not that the film was afraid to poke fun at its subject, nor that it was incapable of doing so effectively. The biggest hurdle for this kids film was deciding it was indeed a kids film. When push came to shove (can you say, “empuje?” No? Well, beat it, Gringo), the film chose to cater to little folks –I think you call them “children”- who admire Dora in earnest and not the crowd who seeks her parodic, kitsch, or ironic value. The latter is a more entertaining film, by far.
Within about 30 seconds of teaching the camera one obvious word of Spanish, teen Dora (Isabela Moner) appears and is shipped the United States, where she acts like she is already highly medicated. Nobody is that happy to attend an American high school for the first time. Nobody. Mom and Dad are treasure hunters, you see. I’m sorry, they are “explorers.” The film was very clear on this point –their interest in an undiscovered city made entirely of gold is purely academic– hence, Dora has to be expressed mailed to the States where angry over-weaponized rednecks in MAGA hats scream about “caravans” and “invasion,” then put her in a cage until ICE has her deported.
Oh, I’m sorry, this was a movie, not real life. No, instead of MAGA over ICE, Dora gets SoCal over easy, a high school where she’s instantly the smartest person around (I wish that part were an exaggeration) and instantly a nerd (ditto). Early on, however, Dora had done little more than
explore high school which –despite her shoe-clad simian friend and kleptomaniac vulpine archnemesis- makes her equally as unique as about 20 million other teens. Hence, a plot was forced upon us which took the form of villains capturing Dora and her friends on a museum field trip and carting the lot back to South America by plane, which, apparently is a lot easier than I’d guess. Now, why did the bad guys capture a teenager and her friends and wrest them thousands of miles away for leverage rather than just pressuring Señor y Señora Dora? ¿Quién sabe? But I will say, it sure did get her exploring.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold devolves as it explores. What might have been a sharp –if slightly cruel- satire, especially if one compares South American forested jungle with North American urban jungle, simply becomes a G-rated poop-joke addled version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There’s no insight quite like “clomping in quicksand sounds like farting.” Dora had adequate room for parody. I am imagining a dark comic horror where our heroine is haunted by hallucinations; her “exploring” comes down to the closet in the room at the mental institution where she lives.
Dora live is a tragic bewilder
Should the suits have just up and killed her?
Now they’ve learned their lesson:
They’re done with the messin’
Next movie will be Bob the Builder
Rated PG, 102 Minutes
Director: James Bobin
Writer: Matthew Robinson, Nicholas Stoller
Genre: Almost fun
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The kind of kid who will actually be shocked/delighted when the two students who pretended not to like each other start kissing
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People disappointed when the parody fizzles
