Just perfect...

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

this movie SUCKS. yeah it does. not for children, it makes crude jokes about a woman. that is not all. the animation is poor at some times and nice at others. like they have more than one studio. now it has a bad guy which is not really bad. he was trying to get popular and tries to get rid of him, but not telling him to get out, so in reality he is nice. in the beginning of the movie they make a reference to shrek. so choppy cat. over all this movie SUCKS.

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

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.

Another reviewer wonders whether this is just drinking up EU subsidies, and I have to admit that a rare Spanish venture in animation ended up in a disaster.One - animation is decent, although animals look like old Pixar and Dreamworks, or clones of them * especially the donkey, who is 99% Shrek's Donkey, and the hen, very much like in 'for the birds'.Two - a very complex storyline, based on a very long book with a difficult plot and many subplots... that wasn't a good idea for a cartoon, which gets lost Three - some good second level jokes and some good first level jokes.Overall... too hard for kids, too long, too convoluted. Pity they hired decent animators but poor editors and script writers.