El Cid - Die Legende

Decent animation film from Spanish Big Studio Filmax, but painfully unfunny. Technically miles above other Spanish animation films from recent years, including this Christmas "Los REYES MAGOS", but lacking a good script. Some of the original voices (supplied by Spanish stars like Natalia Verbeke or Sancho Gracia) are fine, but others simply got to my nerves.

The historical events in which this story are based result to be the following :

Rodrigo Diaz of Vivar, alias Cid, was a legendary 11th century warrior-hero, he was born in Burgos(1043) and died in Valencia(1099).

Being dead Fernando I succeeded Sancho of Castilla . But Sancho is killed by Bellido Dolfos and Alfonso VI rules over of the kingdom.

In the church of Santa Gadea, Cid ordered to King Alfonso VI swear haven't murdered his brother Sancho.

Cid is banished as punishment. Then, the Almoravides's Spain invasion commanded by Ben Yusuff and defeat of Sagrajas, did the king Alfonso VI forgot the humiliation of Cid and asked him the command of troops against Moors.

The Spanish medieval hero vanquished to Muslims in Cuarte(1094) , Bairen(1097) and Valencia that lost and retrieves.

Cid married Jimena and were born two daughters : Elvira and Sol.

The movie is an enjoyable animation film , fitting partially to historic deeds. The film is quite amusing with emphasis on cartoon spectacle but perhaps don't like little boys because there are a bit violence and strong shots and is more adjusted a parents guide. Direction film by Jose Pozo is nice , Oscar Araujo's music is of first-rate and very spectacular . Production by Julio Fernandez, ruling of Filmax Productions and Fantastic Factory is fine.

Rating :7/10, acceptable. Well worth seeing .

I don't understand really why this is not as good as it could have been. The production looks very nice, the backgrounds are wonderful and use sometimes inconvenient colors, the animation is nice, the style of drawing is nice (with exception of the villain, who is really very badly drawn), the gigantic arms add an own touch to it. But what the movie lacks is a decent screenplay and most of all, originality. The whole picture feels like made of pieces you have seen thousands of times before, it has nothing new to bring (except the beautiful backgrounds I mentioned before). The beginning, with the two young fools racing against each other feels like a real ripoff of Prince of Egypt. The villain is some kind of poor Jafar-ripoff. And as said before, it all isn't that involving and funny. Another thing that really disturbed me is the editing. Normally I don't notice often bad editing, but here it really annoyed me at times.

So, this is a movie that looks excellent, like it could have been made by Disney or Dreamworks, but it misses almost everything what makes this two companies great. Too bad.

The story of El Cid has excited people for centuries; unfortunately, the movie will not. This piece of animation from Spain is overly long, lacks a gripping storyline, is not funny, and the animation is spotty at best. The characters are not very well drawn (forearms which are supposed to be muscular are replaced by drawings of what seem to be big balloons), the background does not evoke the beauty of Spain, and it all seems to be monochromatic. One particularly distasteful detail is that all the 'good' Muslims have Spanish accents while the 'bad' Muslim has an Arab accent. My son was bored and my daughter commented: 'We came to see the wrong movie'. That says it all.

This is not a very good movie. Story can be interesting but it wasn't. It looks only boring, don't funny and predictable both for adults and kids.

Characters didn't very well drawn, sometimes animation looked simply miserably. You can't find here good characters development (like in charming Disney's masterpiece), dialogs sometimes become annoying and stupid. Maybe it was good enough for Spanish viewers and critics (it have won award for best Spanish animated film of the year) but for anyone else I can't recommend this film. Only one good thing, what I have found in this disappointment, was a final song. It was pretty good.

My grade: 4,4 out of 10. You can find a better way to pass 1,5 hours of your life. I was really disappointed.

Sorry for my bad English.