‘Tadeo Jones and the Wonderful Lamp’: good cultural adventures with a comic imbalance

Since his 2004 short film, Goya Award winner in its animation category, more than two decades of stories and drawings back Enrique Gato, creator of Tadeo Jones and always at the helm of direction in the, as of today, four films released in theaters. But what truly supports Gato and his collaborators is popular success. The character has made a place in the imagination of many kids from several generations and the box office has been indisputable with its earnings: The Adventures of Tadeo Jones (2012), 2.7 million viewers; Tadeo Jones 2: The Secret of King Midas (2017), 3.2 million; and Tadeo Jones 3: The Emerald Tablet (2022), nearly two million. Then we can point out some flaws (and we have done so in this newspaper over the years): the overused cocktail of references, the comedy resources, the stereotypes… But in the technical and artistic whole there was a notable leap for Spanish animation, and Gato remains there: seeking a fourth triumph with Tadeo Jones and the Wonderful Lamp.

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Three veteran screenwriters who, initially, had nothing to do with animation and adventure, ended up shaping the character created by Gato in the first of the two shorts about Tadeo: Manuel Matji, José Ángel Esteban, and Carlos López, also producers of that piece. With the arrival of the feature films, the writing diversified and names like Jordi Gasull and, above all, Josep Gatell and Manuel Burque appeared in the credits, who in the third installment better reinforced the dialogues, avoiding the little jokes of false contemporary and adult fits, and balancing well the classic adventure and family comedy.

Fourteen years ago, when the first feature was released, we thought that The Adventures of Tadeo Jones seemed like the beginning of the path for Spanish animation, but not the end. A decade and a half later it is confirmed that formally there is a great visual power, that the character design has improved, as well as the treatment of light and color. The editing and staging (or its animated simulation) were always commendable, with experience they are even more so, and this wonderful lamp has an excellent pace, with very accomplished direction, framing, and movement. In short, there are enough incentives for kids to have fun, and its mix of time travel, culture, art, and human history, set between London, Athens, the new America of Christopher Columbus, and the lost kingdom of Paititi, is particularly effective.

However, unlike in the third installment, Burque and Gatell, the screenwriters, have not well calibrated the comedy. By rough estimate, in too many sequences there must be a joke every 30 seconds and only the greatest screenwriters in history surpass that. Because, when the jokes without humor accumulate, and the attempts at laughter through dialogue fall into the pit of astonishment, the castle of fun can collapse. And with Mummy, the classic comic character par excellence, who should lighten the mood with his jokes, it falls into the chaos of the clown of the show, into the Jar Jar Binks syndrome (the hated character from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace): something like being too funny to become annoying.

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Fortunately, the beautiful design of the daughter of the archaeologist couple protagonists and her onomatopoeias almost in the style of minions have much more charm. And the ending is beautiful enough to leave a good feeling. Tadeo Jones, keeps going strong.