Donkey Xote

My ten year old daughter and I just keep looking at each other in disbelief throughout this whole movie. The plot is awful, hard to follow, thrown together, and a big pile of crap, really. Attempts at humor are thrown in, random, and unfunny. This movie is BAD, and not in a good way. The animation is fairly decent, but as this kind of technology becomes more readily available for low budget producers, more junk of this kind will continue to be put out. It all seemed forced. They forced to get a plot line, they forced to get some humor, and they forced to create an emotional story that would draw the viewer in. I have to tell ya, they fail on every count.

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.

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!

I have read a comment about this movie, and the author confess that he doesn't know who was Don Quixote (or Don Quijote in modern Spanish). I suppose that this gentleman is British, because he lives in the UK. In order to illustrate his knowledge, Don Quijote was the very first novel or romance in the whole world, and was written by Miguel de Cervantes Zaavedra. This book was published for the first time in Madrid, in 1605. The first British version of Don Quijote was made by Thomas Shelton. This translation was written in 1612 and also was the first translation to other language. I may suggest the reading of the English version. It Is not easy to read because it is a very extended book. I have several editions of Don Quijote in Spanish, and every one has more than one thousand pages. The character of Don Quijote de la Mancha is very complicated, but I could say that he represents that kind of people who believes everything that is written in the chivalry books. He believes in characters like those of the round table, or the Spanish character Amadis de Gaula, and he try to be one of those knights-errand. In fact, the first English translation of Don Quijote is: "The History of the Valorovs and Wittie Knight-Errant Don Quixote of the Mancha". The writer, Miguel de Cervantes Zaavedra, is to the Spanish speaking people the same as William Shakespeare is for the English speaking people. And that's all

this movie SUCKS. yeah it does. not for children, it makes crude jokes about a woman. that is not all. the animation is poor at some times and nice at others. like they have more than one studio. now it has a bad guy which is not really bad. he was trying to get popular and tries to get rid of him, but not telling him to get out, so in reality he is nice. in the beginning of the movie they make a reference to shrek. so choppy cat. over all this movie SUCKS.