'Dora and the Lost City of Gold' As Seen With an Audience of Kids

This weekend my family and I were invited to a screening of “Dora and The Lost City of Gold,” which officially opens in theatres on August 9. The movie has been on our radar for a while and both of my girls were interested in seeing it. And, I can’t lie, hubby and I were looking forward to seeing it too because we prefer live-action films but can rarely find any that appeal to the whole family.

I read a couple of reviews of the movie before I went to see it.

One of the reviews complained that “this late summer Paramount release is squeaky clean and unhip to an unusual degree.” Apparently, the teens in the film aren’t horny enough for the reviewer’s taste.

The other review, written by my friend Yolanda Machado, is mostly glowing, but she does think that the first act of the film is awkward. According to her, it “plays as though screenwriters Nicholas Stoller (‘Night School’) and Matthew Robinson (‘Monster Trucks’) couldn’t decide what they wanted the film to be: Is it coming-of-age story? A fish-out-of-water tale? A by-the-book play on the original TV series? Or is this supposed to be ‘Mean Girls’ for Gen Z?”

What we and a theatre full of kids thought …

The screening of the movie was packed with young kids, tweens and teens. They far outnumbered any adults in the audience. Because there were so many kids there, my husband and I assumed that there was going to be a lot of noise and talking during the film, but there wasn’t.

The kids weren’t raucous at all because they were engrossed in the film. They laughed in all the right places, never lost interest and even clapped at the end.

Afterwards, I talked to my daughters to see what they thought and they both genuinely liked it. My eldest daughter’s favorite parts were mostly at the beginning, the parts that my friend Yolanda didn’t particularly like. My youngest daughter also liked the beginning of the film a lot because it made her laugh the most.

As for my husband and I, we pretty much liked all of it. He’s not really a laugh-out-loud kind of person, but Alejandro (Eugenio Derbez) literally had cackling at one point

We all thought the actors were great and that Isabela Moner, who plays Dora, is freakin’ delightful. Let’s be real, Dora has the potential to be annoying AF, but Moner’s Dora is earnest and likeable AF.

As for the movie being too sanitized because the teens aren’t “hormonal” enough according to that one critic … really, guy? It’s a family movie. I, for one, don’t want to watch teens make out or paw each other. And it’s not necessary in what is really an action/adventure film. When I brought up that it’s incredibly refreshing that a movie with a young female lead isn’t all about who gets with whom, my eldest said, “I KNOW, RIGHT?!”

In the end, this movie wasn’t made for critics, it was made for kids and their families and as far as our family goes, the movie did well by us.