Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

TheLittleSongbird 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

Chrysanthepop 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.

chris-3493 Over the Christmas period we've taken our sons to see quite a few movies. I thought we reached the bottom of the barrel last October when we went to see 'space chimps' but that was long before Donkey Xote (DX). Let's start with the positives. The animation isn't bad whatever some reviewers here may have written. It's not cutting edge and is a little on the simple side maybe but it's easy on the eye. That's it. Everything else is simply awful. I don't know if the original Spanish version makes more sense but the plot is is over complicated, the dialogue impossibly convoluted and the acting voice overs appalling. Watching it is a little like reading obscure eastern European poetry. It seems to be as much an exercise in proving what an intellectually clever chap the director is but in trying so hard to do so shows actually that he's completely clueless. There are characters cropping up in the film that are utterly pointless, don't add to the story and serve to confuse the audience. The script is largely read as if your listening to the kind of live translation service that you hear at news conferences or during UN addresses. some of the voices are so irritating you could easily feel like screaming. The voice over for Don Quixote's horse is, possibly, the most excruciating that I've ever heard. It pains me to say that my boys (aged 3 and 7) enjoyed it. That said they didn't really have a clue what was going on and they will happily sit in front of any cartoon in any language without any complaint. If you're a sentient adult please, please, please give this movie a miss.

Hector Mendoza 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