by Katherine Simon If you grew up during the early- to mid-2000s and regularly watched Nickelodeon, chances are you’re at least somewhat familiar with Dora the Explorer. It was a show that aimed to teach the Spanish language to young children, but failed to teach viewers anything beyond the bare minimum and had virtually no respect for the audience’s intelligence. Despite this, the series went on to see major success, with it being Nick’s second-most-merchandised show behind Spongebob Squarepants for a while. Still, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone speak fondly of the show in retrospect, but that didn’t stop Viacom from seeing it as a potential nostalgic goldmine. In an era where Nick is exploiting '90s and early-2000s nostalgia hard, they somehow saw potential in Nick Jr. nostalgia and decided to make a live action adventure film out of Dora. The mere concept of turning Dora the Explorer into an edgier action flick is so ridiculous that even CollegeHumor parodied the idea seven years back, but, if the Sonic fiasco is anything to go by, Paramount has absolutely no shame and will put out any crazy idea the executives come up with. With a premise so bizarre, the film has the potential to either be genuinely awful or so absurd that it’s fun. Ultimately, Dora and the Lost City of Gold leaned more into the latter category, being an average family movie with some weird moments, but not something to write home about.
A sometimes entertaining, mostly predictable storyline
An unremarkable cast of characters
Surprisingly decent presentation
IMDb IMDb
