Donkey Xote

I've just seen the English dubbed Spanish DVD. With Pixar raising the bar and Disney and others raising their game to produce high quality animated movies with great stories it is hard to comprehend how this got made. The animation is fine but the story ... oh dear. Set some time after the well known story of Don Quixote this follows the same group as they try to find Dulcinea but the story is told from the point of view of their steeds - a brave donkey and a cowardly horse. Was this only made with Government/European Union taxpayer subsidies to help the Spanish film industry (a 'europudding')? I suspect so as the number of logos appearing in the credits is amazing. If you are a fan of Don Quixote you won't like this - If you aren't a fan you still won't like this!

While the animation and style of the movie aren't half bad, in fact (besides of background stuff and vegetation not exactly moving much and the characters seeming lifeless every now and then) it seems better than a lot other animated movies (except anything by Pixar or Dreamworks of course).

That said the writing is horrible, mainly because the story doesn't seem to make any sense WHATSOEVER. From what I gathered it seems to play a few years after Don Quixote's fight against the windmills and all of his adventures and the movie is to about 50% about Sancho's Donkey (thus called Donkey Xote). The actions and traits of the characters deviate from one scene to another and the story even gets into the bizarre at times.

For example we got a "bad guy", that isn't really evil... more conflicted or confused cause he wants to get famous. And he seems to be the kind of guy that believes the best way to make you leave a city would be to make everyone else disappear so you feel unwelcome, then block all the rivers and burn all the food so you'll have to leave after a while instead of say throwing you out directly... and while that might have some sort of style it's illogical and this movie is riddled with similar stuff. Also there's some of his minions that want to kill some of the protagonists at one point and after the heroes managed to save themselves, there doesn't seem to be any grudge and both parties just walk away.

With a decent script this could've been a nice animated movie similar to say Shrek but as it stands right now it's somewhere between a 3-4 for me.

I paid US$3 for the DVD and it was too much!

Here what is bad about it:

(1) The 3-D animation is very fine in certain scenes and very coarse in others (probably the movie was done by different groups/companies).

(2)The main character looks suspiciously like a blue-eyed version of "Donkey" from Shrek (they even make a reference to Shrek at the beginning of the movie).

(3) Most of the music was not composed for the movie, they just recycled some oldies.

Bottom Line:

If I had seen this movie on Netflix at no cost other than my regular membership fee I would still have felt disappointed.

From Spain's Barcelona comes a charming and hilarious animated film called 'Donkey Xote'. The title is a reference to Don Quixote (one of the oldest romance-adventure novels). The film has been dubbed in several languages and it is done wonderfully. The plot is a bit strange but the characters are very likable, especially the animals. I feel that a comedy loses much of its humour when dubbed (due to lost in translation) but here it really worked. 'Donkey Xote' works excellently as an English language film but I prefer to watch it in the original Catalan language. The adult humour and other situational comedy provide some laugh out loud moments. This film probably might have done good business internationally, had it been marketed that way. The animation isn't of Pixar or Dreamworks quality but there's plenty more other things to keep one thoroughly entertained. I also loved the numerous references to other movies and pop-culture and the way they were used in the story. The makers were clearly inspired by 'Shrek' (the makers mention it) but much of 'Donkey Xote' even exceeds the charm of its source of inspiration. The last few animated films that I have seen of Spain have been of average quality at best but 'Donkey Xote' is a film with heart and it shows potential that Spain may not be too far behind in the animated films market when compared to America and Japan.

As has been said by the previous commentators, the best thing about Donkey Xote is the animation, which is at least decent and the one component that shows any signs of effort. The character designs are rather derivative (especially the blatant one for the donkey Rucio) and plastic, but there is a good amount of vibrant colour, some of the landscapes are quite gorgeously rendered for low-budget animation and there is evidence of detail and depth in the backgrounds, with the standouts being the nocturnal visuals and a reasonably effective dream sequence.

Unfortunately, that is it for the positives for Donkey Xote. The music does have its rousing moments and sense of adventure, but those moments are too far outweighed by the number of times the music is inappropriately used or misplaced and the pop songs just don't gel with the setting or the story (it was like those involved had completely forgotten what the time and place were) and I just didn't see the point in including them.

With the characters, they are either gross distortions of the characters in the book, being the complete opposite of what made them so appealing memorable (what is done with Sancho Panza is so bad it's almost offensive), or incredibly annoying, especially the too prominent and quickly irritating Rucio, who has absolutely none of the irreverence and wit of Shrek's Donkey. It was interesting to have the story told from the viewpoint of Rucio, but it did feel too much and went off on a tangent more than it did telling a succinct story.

The voices are very uninspired and often sound under-rehearsed or bored, Quixote having very little of his touching dignity. It's the writing and the story that really make Doneky Xote as bad as it is. The script does try to have the vibe of Shrek, but contains none of its wit, clever humour or charm. Everything here feels muddled and leaden, with some very poorly timed and childish jokes, lines that hold no relevance to the story and only adds to the confusion and it feels very anachronistic.

The story chiefly suffers from trying to tell a very long and difficult story (also one that very few children will be familiar with) in 90 minutes, it is hard enough compressing and adapting it for live action but while it is laudable it just doesn't translate well for animation of this length and budget. It contains themes that will go over youngsters' heads (and this is not intended to be patronising, this is coming from a person who think children's taste and intelligence are often underestimated), subplots come out of nowhere, are introduced and skimmed over even quicker or are completely unnecessary to the story and it is so rushed and jumps around so much that the film feels really convoluted, some parts incomprehensible, and numerous times it's difficult to tell who's who.

Overall, laudable try, considering the nature of the Don Quixote story, but only has the animation going for it. Instead it feels like a mess of Don Quixote and a Shrek rip-off while forgetting all of the ingredients that makes Don Quixote and Shrek as good and memorable as they are. 2/10 Bethany Cox