ReviewDora and the Lost City of Gold film review: Lara Croft meets Indiana Jones in live-action Dora the Explorer adaptation
- It’s derivative, but neatly done, well paced, and everything adds up. The story is exactly what you’d expect from the title
- Isabela Moner, playing a now teenage Dora, overcomes the similarities with Indiana Jones films and the Lara Croft character
3.5/5 stars
Unspooling like a female version of Young Indiana Jones, the charming Dora and the Lost City of Gold offers quality fun for children and young teenagers, and is breezy enough to be enjoyable viewing for their adult guardians too.
Although it’s based on the long-running American educational television series Dora the Explorer, carried on the Nickelodeon channel, there have been some significant changes, not least of which is that the movie is live-action rather than a cartoon.
The heroic Dora, played enthusiastically by the 18-year-old Isabela Moner, is a teenager rather than a child, and the film is more about entertainment than education. Then again, Dora’s personable character doesn’t deviate from that of the original incarnation. The story is exactly what you would expect from the title, but it’s neatly done, the pacing is perfect, and everything adds up at the end.
While they are between adventures in the jungles of Peru, Dora and her explorer parents (Michael Peña and Eva Longoria) discover a map they think will lead them to a lost Inca settlement, the City of Gold. Dora wants to go on the expedition, but her parents deem the trip too dangerous, and send her to Los Angeles to attend high school with her cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg).