Animation is changing all the time and with "The Road to Eldorado," the second full length cartoon from Dreamworks SKG, it gets modernized and matures. Not that the film isn't your typical kids fare in most respects. But Dreamworks does some bold things here really, turning Disney on it's ear and getting a PG rating. First, they use mild swear words. "Hell," "crappy" and "butt" pop up in the film. They also make their scantily clad heroine a sexpot. A carnal situation is at least implied. (After seeing the half naked vixen in the ad campaign, my friends and I joked that the tagline should be: "Eldorado. They Came for the Gold. They Stayed for the Pussy.") And finally, there is some brief nudity. Yep. You see the two heros naked hineys in a skinny dipping sequence. (Let's not even get into the homoeroticism in the film).

Still, with all this seemingly "adult" flavor, the film is relatively harmless. It's really pretty tame by comparison to modern television. All Dreamworks has done is to beat the Internet erotic animated porn mavens to the punch. The cels with the butt shots will probably sell on the open market at a higher price than any other modern animation cel in history. It's no biggie and nothing that will corrupt innocent pre-pubers. They'll probably get a good giggle out of it.

The animation in the film, aside from this, is either typical Disneyesque fare or really awesome new creations. Color and design and animation are used in ways that they just haven't really been used before. It's still more cartoon than animation, but it's really beautiful to look at sometimes. It's even trippy occassionally.

And most importantly, the film is hilarious. You will laugh your own hineys off. Kids will too. It's rarely stupid, often witty, and generally a joy to experience this film.

The only problem with the cartoon, sadly, is the music of Elton John and Tim Rice. It just doesn't exactly fit. It's some of the best work Elton has done in ages. The songs are great. But only one song is sung by the characters, really. The rest of them are just Elton John songs that pop up in the middle of the film for almost no real reason. It's just doesn't work exactly right. It seems a little too much like watching "Ferngully" sometimes. Okay, it's really better than that. The songs are great. Even if they stick out like sore thumbs. It's just sad that the great music seems somehow a waste here.

Dreamworks continues to punch it's way into the Hollywood marketplace by taking established genres and turning them ever so slightly on their ears. Modern American kids animation deserved a kick in the rump. Dreamworks delivers one here. This is a wake-up call to the other studios.

Man, who would of thought that the review I wrote with the most scatalogical references would be for a cartoon.

Note:

With the voices of Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline, Edward James Olmos, Armand Assante and Rosie Perez.

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