El Cid: The Legend
El Cid: The Legend
| 27 November 2003 (USA)
El Cid: The Legend Trailers

Rodrigo's life as a child was a noble and happy one, he entered school at a young age. Often he went on adventures with his best friend Sancho and often visited his beloved one Jimena, the daughter of the count of Gormaz. His happiness did not last forever, after the death of the King Fernando, Rodrigo is seen wrapped in a world of plots and conspiracies that to will put an end to the life of Sancho and the consequent coronation of the infant Alfonso. All of a sudden, Rodrigo loses all that that he has acquired, his best friend and the love of its beloved one, and is unjustly exiled to Castile without honor!

Reviews
Tuchergson Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater
GamerTab That was an excellent one.
DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.
Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
dkproject I found this movie to be quite enjoyable. I loved the stylized characters, the sense of weight of their bodies design. The dialogs in Spanish are smart and funny, although there are several parts were too many facts are compressed into long sentences. I have mixed feeling on the presentation of Rodrigo (the Cid) as a youngster: on one hand I liked the reveal that he turned indeed into the Cid, but on the other hand there isn't enough screen time for us to know he will be the protagonist. One mayor disappointment was the lack of battle scenes. The one battle (Valencia) is shot beautifully using a mix of classical and 3d animation. But the rest of the battles are narrated on a paper-cut style. This being the story of a warrior, it surprised me that he was shown, for the most part, as nothing more than a skillful sneaker. Also, the final confrontation with the antagonist does not make justice to neither of the characters. Having said that, I must insist that the whole royal drama during the first 30 minutes of the movie are highly recommendable, particularly thanks to well crafted parallel stories at the end of the first act. The movie somehow decays during the rest of the film and too many problems are solved by the Cid's pets.
ilBuono I don't understand really why this is not as good as it could have been. The production looks very nice, the backgrounds are wonderful and use sometimes inconvenient colors, the animation is nice, the style of drawing is nice (with exception of the villain, who is really very badly drawn), the gigantic arms add an own touch to it. But what the movie lacks is a decent screenplay and most of all, originality. The whole picture feels like made of pieces you have seen thousands of times before, it has nothing new to bring (except the beautiful backgrounds I mentioned before). The beginning, with the two young fools racing against each other feels like a real ripoff of Prince of Egypt. The villain is some kind of poor Jafar-ripoff. And as said before, it all isn't that involving and funny. Another thing that really disturbed me is the editing. Normally I don't notice often bad editing, but here it really annoyed me at times. So, this is a movie that looks excellent, like it could have been made by Disney or Dreamworks, but it misses almost everything what makes this two companies great. Too bad.
Juni78ukr This is not a very good movie. Story can be interesting but it wasn't. It looks only boring, don't funny and predictable both for adults and kids.Characters didn't very well drawn, sometimes animation looked simply miserably. You can't find here good characters development (like in charming Disney's masterpiece), dialogs sometimes become annoying and stupid. Maybe it was good enough for Spanish viewers and critics (it have won award for best Spanish animated film of the year) but for anyone else I can't recommend this film. Only one good thing, what I have found in this disappointment, was a final song. It was pretty good. My grade: 4,4 out of 10. You can find a better way to pass 1,5 hours of your life. I was really disappointed. Sorry for my bad English.
peepingvertigo Decent animation film from Spanish Big Studio Filmax, but painfully unfunny. Technically miles above other Spanish animation films from recent years, including this Christmas "Los REYES MAGOS", but lacking a good script. Some of the original voices (supplied by Spanish stars like Natalia Verbeke or Sancho Gracia) are fine, but others simply got to my nerves.