Xico's Journey ฮีโกผจญภัย (2020) [พากย์ไทย บรรยายไทย]

The Spanish film Xico's Journey (original title: El Camino de Xico) tackles the issue of environmental degradation wrought by mining and industrial corporations, often under the garb of 'progress'. And while topics like 'fracking' can get heavy for a kids' movie, the film spoon-feeds them to the little ones, with the help of colourful and magical human and animal characters.



It opens in the idyllic mountain village of San Jaime de las Jaibas in Mexico, where a young girl, Copi (Verónica Alva), and her best pal, Gus (Luis Angel Jaramillo), playfully run around the streets, flying kites with their dog, Xico (Pablo Gama Iturrarán). It then cuts to greedy corporate executives in a boardroom meeting, who are hell bent on mining and fracking every last inch of the village's mountain for gold. Before you know it, they have the village mayor's approval for their scheme, who promises the villagers that it will bring them advancement and riches too. However, Copi's grandma Nana Petra (voiced by Lila Downs) - who is one of the three guardians of the magical mountain - thinks otherwise. Along with the other two, she plans to save it, though her granddaughter, Copi, beats her to her mission, when she overhears Nana say that her mother isn't dead, but inside the mountain.


Copi is accompanied on her journey by Xico and Gus, as well as her Nana's magical stone. En route they meet a talking rabbit, a sobbing tree, and an eccentric shaman possum, amidst enchanted scenery, and eventually find out that Xico possesses magical powers that are the key to solving their crisis.


However noble its message might be, the film is let down by its out-of-date animation. What's curious is that there are parts of the film where the animation is stellar - like the introduction to the enchanted mountain or a scene exploring mythology and Xico's magical roots, but the creators lose much of their steam and creativity halfway through. There's a 'been-done-before' quality to it all, and if anything, movies like Moana have handled topics like climate change a lot less heavy-handedly. Here, the whole 'save-the-environment' and 'fracking' message is hammered into relentlessly, making it much too repetitive. As for the characters, before you really get to know them, Copi and Gus take a backseat to Xico, and adorable though he may be, he fails to carry the movie on his pup shoulders. There's not much for adults here. Be it dialogues or storyline, the movie seems to be catering strictly to a below-10 years of age audience, who may or may not be captivated by this flick, seeing as they too are spoilt for choice when it comes to good animated films today!