The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
Kids certainly won’t learn anything here, but they’re not likely to mistake it for entertainment, either.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Australia, United States · 2019
Rated PG · 1h 42m
Director James Bobin
Starring Isabela Merced, Jeffrey Wahlberg, Madeleine Madden, Eugenio Derbez
Genre Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy
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After years of exploring the Peruvian jungle, Dora is ready for her toughest adventure yet: high school. But when her parents go missing while searching for a hidden city of gold, it's up to her to save them. Along with her cousin, Diego, and her monkey sidekick, Boots, Dora must traverse the treacherous jungle to find her family.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
Kids certainly won’t learn anything here, but they’re not likely to mistake it for entertainment, either.
The A.V. Club by Jesse Hassenger
Dora And The Lost City Of Gold, like that Nancy Drew movie, isn’t really for teenagers, any more than High School Musical is; it’s for tweenage-and-younger kids who look toward the high-school horizon with a combination of aspirational awe and chilling fear.
Chicago Tribune by Katie Walsh
The action in this live-action adaptation is sanded down and decidedly safe. Bobin loses the geographical thread in the film’s climax in and around Parapata, but it’s never about the visual thrills, it’s about the girl at the center of it all.
The most endearing quality of Nicholas Stoller and Matthew Robinson’s script — not counting the fact they didn’t try to whitewash their Latina heroine — is the way it permits Dora to remain indefatigably upbeat no matter what the situation, whether navigating treacherous Incan temples or facing an auditorium of jeering teenage peers.
It's still as charming as a ham-fisted Hollywood treatment of a kids' cartoon can be. I don't see why any ten year-old wouldn't adore Dora.
Disney, take note: This is how to do a winning live-action update of a cartoon.
Not very funny and never especially touching, this Dora feels dispiritingly perfunctory — a two-hour babysitting tool that leaves little impression.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
In essence, every dramatic goal is achieved far too easily, every opponent is ultimately made of straw. The characters are never truly challenged, as if the filmmakers are afraid that any credible peril might prove too frightening for some little kid.
The biggest challenge of an actor in any live-action update of an animated character is to make an audience that is already loyal to the original fall in love with a newer rendition. And that’s exactly what Moner does; her Dora has the DNA of everything that made the original so special while offering a fresh take for newer generations experiencing the character for the first time.
History has a way of repeating itself. Stories have a way of coming true.
An enthralling cat-and-mouse game set against the landscape of Europe.
A turbo-charged look at a bromance gone bad.