Director – Gonzalo Gutiérrez – 2024 – Argentina, Germany, Spain – Cert. U – 88m
***1/2
The young, present day descendants of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza must save La Mancha from a villainous property developer – animated children’s adventure is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 7th
(UK cinemas are showing the English language version: further voice credits are given for Spanish and German language versions, where available.)
Alfonso (voice: English: Micke Alejandro Morena Lamprea; Spanish: Patricio Lago; German: Julian Jansson) the great, great, great, great, great-grandson of Don Quixote, lives with his parents in the small Spanish village of La Mancha which is under threat of terrible storms that the occupants attribute to climate change. Like his ancestor, Alfonso misreads things, such as an impending storm which he believes to be a storm monster.
He and his dad Dan Quixote (voice: English: Bradley Krupsaw), who alone among all the characters here speaks in rhyming couplets, and his mum (voice: English: Jennifer Moule; Spanish: Carla Petersen) are both idealists, to the extent that Dan is the one person in the village who has refused to sign his home over to besuited property developer Mr. Carrasco (voice: English: Thomas Harris), whose snake oil salesman charms seem to have convinced all the other villagers to sell up and move out to his development “with children in mind” of Carascoland, towards which they are currently heading in their cars en masse, despite Alfonso’s hurtling around on his bicycle warning everybody of the storm monster heading in their direction.
In the course of this mayhem, Alfonso befriends locals Pancho (descendant of Sancho Panza) (voice: English: Matthew Morena Lamprea; Spanish: Demián Velazco Rochwerger) and Victoria (voice: English: Cassie Glow; Spanish: Karol Sevilla; German: Marina Blanke) on whom he develops an immediate crush. As well as three white rabbits, whose presence is never satisfactorily explained – not that that matters one jot.
Pancho has learned from his parents (voices: English: Matthew Wray, Catalina Hannon) that the Quixote family are somewhat delusional, but on meeting Alfonso, he casts such prejudices aside, only for them to surface later when he thinks Dan Quioxte has betrayed them by collaborating with property developer Carasco. In fact, their two dads have teamed up, along with the Panzas’ extremely smart dog Tesla (voice: English: Thomas Harris), to infiltrate Carasco’s lair and destroy his storm-making machine. However, things don’t quite go according to plan, and they get captured…
Carasco is a cartoon version of a Bond villain, surrounded by henchmen (voice: English: Thomas Harris) in suits. His lair contains a labyrinth of strikingly designed corridors, and he has various giant robots in the forms of both mechanical cranes and, later, spiders.
In true Don Quixote form, parts of the local landscape are covered in windmills which Alfonso mistakes for giants who, when Pancho loads them with new batteries, come to his aid in the battle against the giant mecha spiders. Other memorable set pieces include a disintegrating bridge across a vast chasm, a dirigible, a parachute jump, and a bascule bridge which the local residents in their cars must be prevented from crossing.
Although the male / female roles are assigned along traditional grounds – the fathers are mostly more active than the mothers, the villain and his henchmen are men, the character of Victoria acts as a rebuttal to all this, as important among the three friends as either of the two boys who, at one point, rescues Alfonso from danger as a “knight in distress”, which is a nice touch. The boy / girl / romance elements are handled well: in a scene where Alfonso, believing he’s about to die attempts to kiss her, she puts her eyepatch against her mouth before his mouth reaches it and tells him, as she parachutes off the dirigible, that if he wants to kiss her, he should ask her out (as she falls, he does so, and she accepts).
The three kids at the centre of this animated children’s adventure have a lot in common with the bicycle-riding kids of the rather better, live action Riddle of Fire (Weston Razooli, 2023), although they don’t all have bicycles. The sense of childhood camaraderie is similar, even though Giants of La Mancha is constructed round one central protagonist (Alfonso) rather than a group of kids.
The pacing of the piece is completely insane, with never a dull moment and so much rapid-fire action that you suspect the target audience (and possibly the director) must be people with attention deficit disorder. Whatever, it’ll keep kids glued to their seats for the duration and doesn’t insult an adult intelligence (although you might wish it stopped and took more breaths than it does: the film is bonkers and relentless; you’ll feel exhausted by the end).
Most of the computer animation is adequate rather than fantastic, although there’s a beautiful opening sequence in a completely different style which will take your breath away. However, the overall frenetic energy of the piece carries you along with it, and while there may be nothing particularly demanding – apart from keeping up with the pace – the speed at which everything whizzes past the viewer more than compensates.
The start of the end credits treat you to a worthwhile selection of production drawings and character designs, in case like me you’re the sort of animation geek who appreciates such things.
The film screens here in its English language dubbed version, which was shown to press, although there appear to be Spanish and German dubbed versions as well. On this occasion, the English language dubbed version feels perfectly adequate, and it may well be that the film was animated to a pre-recorded English language track, with the other two languages likely post-dubbed later on.
Giants of La Manchais out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, March 7th.
Trailer: