NOW SHOWING

MOVIE: Dora and the Lost City of Gold

STARRING: Madeleine Madden, Nicholas Coombe,Isabela Moner, Eva Longoria, Michael Pena and Eugenio Derbez.

RATING: PG

REVIEWER: Seana Cronin

TWO young Australian actors are about to make their global feature film debuts in Paramount’s blockbuster family movie Dora and the Lost City of Gold.

Madeleine Madden and Nicholas Coombe star alongside Isabela Moner, Eva Longoria, Michael Pena and Eugenio Derbez in the big-screen adaptation of Nickelodeon’s animated bilingual series Dora the Explorer.

Filmed on the Gold Coast and directed by James Bobin (The Muppets, Flight of the Conchords), the big-budget film follows a now 16-year-old Dora (Moner) as she leaves her jungle home for the first time to study with her cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg) at an American high school.

There she meets over-achiever Sammy (Madden) and oddball Randy (Coombe) and they are soon swept up in an epic South American adventure to rescue Dora’s parents and find a fabled Incan city of gold.

After moving to Vancouver at age 19 to pursue acting and landing a series of guest and supporting roles, Perth-raised Coombe found success on the 2017 US sitcom Imaginary Mary opposite Jenna Elfman.

Dora has brought him back to home soil, where he’s providing much of the comic relief.

“At the start of the film Randy doesn’t have too many friends, but he ends up in this rag-tag group on this crazy adventure,” he says.

“Because Randy wasn’t in the original cartoon, I had some freedom to create this character. And during a lot of the film the kids are discovering themselves anyway on this adventure. It is really clever writing, which makes it so much easier as an actor.”