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Tad the Lost Explorer and the Secret of King Midas/Tadeo Jones 2

3/10

Stars: Vocal: Trevor White, Alex Kelly, Gemma Whelan, Joseph Balderrama, Ramon Tikaram, Lewis Macleod

Director: David Alonso & Enrique Gato

Seekers of subtext beware!

When the eponymous human hero (Tad) sets out to sort out the villains who are seeking the legendary neckless of King Midas - a piece of jewel that would give them the power to rule the world, he cries 'My Indie hat!' and whizzes back home to get it.

So, naturally, I smugly congratulated myself on realising the source/inspiration of this animated kids' adventure was none other than whip-cracking Mr Jones.

In fact Spanish directors Enrique Gato and David Alonso are simply shrewdly cashing in on the world-wide success of their 2012 animated hit Las aventuras de Tadeo Jones which was never released in the UK.

Undemanding youngsters should put up with the noisy, fast-moving and interminably silly proceedings which follow construction worker-turned-hero Tad (at times a tad more animated than his human predecessor Harrison Ford) as he careers around the world from Spain to Turkey to foil the Bad Guys and rescue his archaeologist girlfriend Sarah, with the blundering help of a dim mummy and a mocking parrot.

It’s fast-moving, painless twaddle (accompanying adults would be well advised to take a book, a torch and earplugs to avoid the show), decorated with adequate animation and an amusing echo of The Italian Job featuring a lunatic sequence of a cab careering through the streets of a Spanish city.

Ironically for a Spanish film the dialogue was in English.

They should have released a subtitled version: a foreign film always tends to attracts rather better reviews from the intellectual media.

Alan Frank

Spain 2017. UK Distributor: Paramount. Colour.
85 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: U.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 04 Mar 2018