Planning to explore Dora movie, even with doubts
On March 23, Paramount Studios released the trailer for its upcoming movie ‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold,’ which made me question the quality of the of the upcoming movie – so I wrote my review of the trailer as a concerned journalist.
With ‘Black Panther’ being the African-American representation and ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ are the Asian-American representation, get ready Hispanic-American people. Our only form representation only being ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ is now over with the release of ‘Dora ad the Lost City of Gold’.
I’ll be explaining my concerns and the likes about the movie.
The first question I come across is, why does Dora live in the jungle? In the show, Dora lived in a pretty yellow home in the middle of nowhere and Dora’s parents aren’t even archeologists, not to mention she actually has siblings which makes me question if any of the writers were forced to watch the actual show, like making a live action was a good idea to begin with.
Now Diego, on the other hand, was actually raised in the freaking jungle and is canon on the show, yet it wasn’t mentioned that Diego lived in the jungle in the movie trailer.
Speaking of which, why does Diego look like some gangster that came off from the Netflix TV show, ‘On My Block’ instead of having his iconic ‘Baby’-era Justin Bieber hairstyle? And why does Dora still have the same clothes that obviously look too small for her and definitely not suited for jungle adventure. It also makes me question why she didn’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes, now that I think about it. Yet Diego still doesn’t wear his outfit from the ‘Go Diego Go’ show?
Now, the budget of the movie looks like it was done with a $20 budget, having more budget than Disney’s live-action ‘Kim Possible’ movie which looked like it had a whole $10 budget. Half of the movie’s budget was probably spent on Boots, whom I will admit is the highlight of the trailer. Although he doesn’t speak in the trailer- according to several sources, the voice actor for Boots is none other than Hispanic-American actor Danny Trejo. Would I imagine a gruff man, like Trejo, for the voice of Boots, who sounds like a child in the show, as the voice actor for Boots in the movie? No, but then again, he was in the Spy Kids movie which really contrasts to his character in his ‘Machete’ movies – so he has a market in children’s movies.
Although the movie plot seems generic at first sight – the usual rag tag team of teens against a powerful villain trope. I am impressed by the number of Hispanic actors casted for the movie like Eugenio Derbez, Michael Peña, Eva Longoria, Benicio De Toro, Danny Trejo, and Adrianna Barraza. Actors and Actresses of Hispanic heritage and not whitewashed by Hollywood.
In conclusion, I would go spend my hard-earned eight dollars for this movie simply because they mentioned Derbez, an actor who is practically a household name for Hispanic-American households who grew up watching shows from Mexican cable channels like Televisa. Am I walking in with high standards? Probably not, but we’ll see when the movie is released Aug. 2.
Hi, I am Ivonee Morales-Mejia. I joined journalism because I needed an extracurricular activity. This year I am looking forward to being a good copy...