Dreamworks Pictures is a good company that generally chooses pretty adequate pictures, but the one field that they still have troubles in is traditional animation. The Prince of Egypt was decent, but had neither the grandeur nor the entertainment value of most Disney cartoons. The Road to El Dorado is no exception, although it is plagued by a not-so-good script and horrible - terrible - songs.

My interest in children's cartoons are growing thin, but I moderately enjoyed the first half of The Road to El Dorado. I was tempted to turn it off during the first few minutes because I didn't want to watch a cartoon, but the story started to captivate me ever so slightly, and there were some funny lines exchanged between the two main characters (voiced by Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh).

The movie and screenplay work like a buddy cop film; the two characters constantly voice off at each other, even though they are best friends. There is a lot of sitcom-style cheesiness, and a lot of jokes reminiscent of today, but I tolerated them for the most part. No, I rather enjoyed them.

But by the second half of the movie, I was bored out of my mind. The jokes had run thin, the story was wandering aimlessly, and there just flat out wasn't anything entertaining. The ending is especially bad (they don't even get to fight Cortez?).

Little kids will probably like it a bit more than I did, and for the most part The Road to El Dorado is pretty tame in content compared to other cartoons of today. There are a couple insinuating scenes that I thought were a little overdone for a children's movie, but for the most part should have deserved a G-rating.

The Road to El Dorado has its moments, and children might enjoy the jokes and adventure. Parents, on the other hand, will grow tired, asking themselves, "Haven't we already seen stuff like this before?"

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.