Western Animation / El Arca

El Arca is an 2007 animated film by Patagonik Animation retelling the story of Noah's Ark, and released by Disney via Buena Vista International.

God feels like The Bible isn't interesting enough compared to Buddhist and Confucian books, so He decides to flood the world in order to create a more compelling story. Two separate storylines run in the film, one focusing on Noah and one on the animals, depicted here as anthropomorphic.

A letter gets sent out to all the animals saying that a pair will be needed to come on the ark in order to survive the flood. The lion prince Xiro volunteers to go after reading half of a torn letter, and picks Bruma, a lioness with vaguely referenced past indiscretions, over Kairel, an apparently fat lioness who helps plan the ark from the animals' side.

Before they board the ark, there is a dispute between the carnivores and herbivores over whether the herbivores would be eaten, which Xiro badly tries to mediate. It starts to rain and in the ensuing rush, a freak accident occurs, resulting in Bruma getting hit by a hippo and crushed to death or drowning.

On the ship, the predators plot a takeover, while Xiro struggles with Kairel to take responsibility. Their plan is to use Panthy, a panthress and nightclub singer, to quasi-seduce Xiro and make him think that he killed a herbivore. It works well enough to convince Kairel, and she runs off.

Meanwhile, Noah gets knocked down a shaft, and his sons fight over who gets the helm of the ship, which ends up running them aground at the north pole. Xiro hears a speech Noah gives to a penguin, thinks that it's God talking to him, and leads the animals out onto the ice to break the ark free. Kairel sees him finally taking responsibility, they drop off the appropriate arctic animals, and God gets the story He wanted for His Bible.

Notable for being a decidedly secular retelling of the story of Noah's Ark, as well as for it's copious amounts of raunchy humor and sexual innuendo in many of the scenes with the animals.

Despite having an English dub, it didn't get an American release until 2014, when Shout! Factory issued a Bowdlerized, family-friendly version under the Market-Based Title Noah's Ark.

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Tropes:

• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: The Shout Factory censored version cuts out the scene where Xiro gets the letter to come to the ark, which shows his letter was torn in half and what he did read caused him to misinterpret the trip as a pleasure cruise. This causes him to come off as much more irresponsible in the censored version, and his change of heart to be more responsible from finally reading the full letter (a scene also cut out) to be out of nowhere.
• Alpha Bitch: Bruma. As she's boarding the ark, she makes jab after jab towards Kairel, gloating about her fate. Bruma is then crushed by a hippo and killed.
• Ambiguously Bi: Bombay. He goes on the ark, traveling with a large female orangutan as the ark is meant for couples. However, he also has a falsetto voice, and has no problems touching Xiro’s buttocks.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • In one scene, Pity the parrot tells jokes about the fable tellers Aesop and Jean de la Fontaine, who wouldn't be born for centuries after the Genesis flood.
  • When Noah visits Farfan and Esther, the prices written on the signs are written with dollar signs and the banknotes Farfan places on his counter also have dollar signs on them. The dollar was invented on April 2, 1792, many centuries after the story's timeline.
  • In one scene, Bombay's mate Lilly goes to use the bathroom, and Bombay asks her if she has a newspaper, the first of which was published in 1609.
• Animal Disguise: Farfan and Esther, the two human antagonists, disguise themselves as a pair of animals named "Grasswhoppers" to sneak onto Noah's Ark.
• Animal Species Accent: A sheep that appears in one scene has a very shaky voice that mimics a sheep's bleating, which is especially pronounced when the sheep laughs and says "Ohh..".
• Art Shift: A demonstration of Dagnino's plan as he describes it to his gang in done in a different animation style.
• Ass Shove: The dove delivering Noah's message at one point flies into an elephant's bottom, and is implied to go inside although all we see is the elephant's Reaction Shot. He's quickly pushed out and flies away from him.
• Bare-Bottomed Monkey: The prologue features a baboon with a shot focusing on his hairless butt, which is pricked by the spikes of a pineapple-like creature.
• Betty and Veronica: Xiro considers himself to be in one between Kairel and Panthy. The way he describes it, he considers Panthy to be more 'fun' than Kairel, but appreciates Kairel for her kindness.
• Big Eater: The carnivorous animals plot to eat the other animals. Panthy's song emphasizes how she is one, singing about how she wants to eat them.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: A Sasquatch was among the mythical creatures depicted in the film.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Panthy's well-endowed figure seems to be the reason why Xiro falls for her when he first sees her. Earlier in the film, most of Xiro's choices for a travel partner (i.e. him not realizing he's supposed to be choosing a mate for after the flood) that are reviewed by Kairel are also described as having "big boobs, no brains".
• Calling Me a Logarithm: When Bruma mocks Kairel, the latter states that she won't reply to her mocking out of respect for Xiro, calling her "a wholly unimpeachable woman". While Kairel's description is sarcastic, Bruma doesn't understand what the word "unimpeachable" means and thinks she's using it to insult her.
• Camp Straight: Bombay, Xiro's assistant. He wears a lavender handkerchief around his neck, has a falsetto voice, and is the only one on the boat who has a lavishly decorated room in pastels. He boards the ship with a large female orangutan who has a deep voice and looks very masculine, so unless he's either bi or lying through his teeth to survive the flood, he's presumably this.
• Carnivore Confusion: Even the humans threaten to eat some of the animals (even the elephant) late in the film.
• Cartoon Creature: The opening scene shows a creature that looks like a pineapple and a hedgehog.
  • Farfan and Esther disguise themselves as animals they call "Grasswhoppers".
• Cats Are Mean:
  • Dagnino the tiger is the leader of a gang of predators intending to eat all the herbivores when they reach land.
  • Panthy the panther and Cachito the puma are members of Dagnino's gang.
  • Bruma the lioness is an Alpha Bitch who doesn't hesitate to mock Kairel and gloat about her eventual fate.
• Chocolate Baby: One of Noah's sons is black even though he and his wife are white—which is a clever inside joke for anyone who's familiar with the old theory that Ham was the ancestor of African peoples.
• Crossover Cosmology: God looks fondly upon the holy texts of Buddhism and Confucianism, offhandedly mentioning Buddha to be just as real as he is.
• Dance Party Ending: The film ends on all the characters (even the bad guys, who have their heads stuck in a wood plank, excluding Panthy who's, for some reason, in a cage) having a party and singing.
• Death by Irony: Among other things, Bruma insults Kairel for being fat. A while later, she's crushed and sent into the waters below by a hippopotamus.
• Disaster Dominoes: As the animals aboard the ark, a frustrated sheep accidentally steps on a skunk's foot. As he snickers, he's promptly urinated on by the skunk, and bumps on a bull as he backs away. The bull strikes the leopard on the butt, the leopard rams on an elephant's butt, the elephant's shocked trumpet startles a monkey, the monkey holds tight on a goat's head, and the running goat bumps one of the hippopotami, who falls on Bruma.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The film isn't even remotely subtle with the sexual overtones. Panthy's line towards Xiro emphasizes such: "The door to my heart, and room, are wide open."
  • In the Dance Party Ending, Panthy is dancing in a suspended cage like a stripper.
• Dope Slap: When the Ark leaves, we see the unicorn, dragon, and Sasquatch who earlier scoffed at the idea of the Ark being real watching it depart. The unicorn expresses his hope that their decision was right, which earns him a smack from the Sasquatch.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Bruma's crushed by a hippopotamus in a freak accident, and Xiro's reaction is to say "Well, there goes the sweet and tender future mother of my children".
• Dub Name Change: Panty and Ludo are renamed Panthy and Wolfgang in the English dub.
• Evil Poacher: One appears in the start of the film to signify the ills of humanity.
• Expy: Xiro, Kairel and Bombay seem to be based on Kovu, Kiara and King Louie respectively.
• Eyes Out of Sight: The Sasquatch's eyes are obscured by his hair.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Bruma gets a really nasty one: she is crushed to death by a hippopotamus and drowns in the flood. Several other characters (like Xiro's parents, a unicorn, a dragon and a Sasquatch) drown in the flood.
  • Dagnino's plan's demonstration shows a pig falling in a boiling pot and being boiled alive, screaming in agony.
• Fan Disservice: If you look really closely, the chicken stripper has boobs before she takes off her top, but they disappear in the next shots. Please note she does not even have a humanlike body type unlike Panthy.
• Feathered Fiend: There is a vulture named Patricio in Dagnino's gang.
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: God and His assistant both live there.
• Frameup: Dagnino's gang frames Xiro for eating a herbivore using tomato juice, a piece of a grasswhopper costume used by Farfan and Panthy's acting skills.
• Furry Confusion: An anthropomorphic bull next to an actual bull is shown in this film.
• God: God appears as a big, blond, dark man with slanted blue eyes.
• God Is Evil: If you actually apply logic to his reasons why he flooded the Earth. While he mainly did it because he was disgusted with how humanity turned out, he also did so because he thought it would make The Bible a more interesting read, treating the destruction of the entire world and all of its people as an interesting plot twist.
• Go Seduce My Archnemesis: Panthy's role in the story is pretty much to seduce Xiro, so that Dagnino can frame him and take over leadership.
• Hartman Hips: All the females in this movie, with Kairel's considerably large butt taking the cake.
• Hate Sink: Bruma, Xiro's choice for a mate to board the ark, spends her screentime as a petty Alpha Bitch constantly insulting Kairel. After she gets killed in a freak accident, no one except Xiro seems to care, and even he gets over it pretty quickly.
• Heel–Face Turn: Dagnino and his gang seem to become good at the end.
• Hero of Another Story: Noah and Xiro function as this towards one another.
• Humanoid Female Animal: Most female characters look way more humanoid than the male characters.
• Idiot Hero: Xiro. It takes him until he's already on the Ark after the world has been flooded to realise that he's not simply on a fancy cruise vacation, and that the world he knew is over. Half of that was because of the message being delivered to the lions was accidentally ripped in two, giving him only the details about the boat. The other half is down to him being clueless. Then there's how easily it takes to sway his attention with a certain female body-type, overtaking any such instincts as common sense. He does manage to mature over the course of the story, however.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Kairel towards Xiro who doesn't notice her and rejects her in favor of more sexually attractive mates much to her chagrin. She also doubles as his Hypercompetent Sidekick and does all the leadership and technical work he's too lazy to do.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Whilst all the prominent female characters in this film have big hips, Panthy's the one who most fits this trope, having big hips and a thin waist, but also a very prominent bust. Of course, given what she's in the film for this isn't too surprising.
• Informed Species: Wolfgang resembles a lynx or bobcat more than he does as an actual wolf while Coco has a head that resembles more like that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• Interspecies Romance: There's a doe and a donkey that can be seen fooling around more than once. Panthy is a black panther (a melanistic version of any one of the Panthera genus) and Xiro having the hots for her is a major plot point, though unlike the doe and donkey, it's actually possible for them to "multiply."
• Karmic Death: Bruma gets one as a direct result of acting like an Alpha Bitch towards Kairel as Xiro's chosen Baby Factory and goes out of her way to give Kairel some Last Disrespects when she thinks the flood will kill her. As punishment she gets crushed and killed by a falling hippopotamus.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Dagnino comically does this to Xiro when he fights him after he gets Punched Across the Room.
  Kairel: Are you so cruel as to kick him while he's down?
  Dagnino: Yes. I am.
  Xiro: Can you stop giving him ideas?
• Kid Sidekick: Angel looks a lot younger than God.
• King of Beasts: King Sabu and every other member of his royal family are lions.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: The mythical creatures decline boarding the ark because they don't think the storm is anything serious. They're left stranded on a small floating rock for their error in judgment.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The wrathful baboon in the opening scene is put on a target for people to throw eggs at in the marketplace.
  • The greedy humans, Farfan and Esther, sneak onto Noah's ark and later knock him out, planning to take over his ship. Upon arriving in the Arctic, the two leave the ark and are accidentally left behind. They are last seen being pursued by two hungry polar bears.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: A character that resembles Heathcliff, apart from a purple nose, briefly appears in a crowd scene.
• Looking a Miffed Animal in the Mouth: While trying to deliver his message, the Dove lands at a lake, noticing how odd it is no animals are around. He takes a sip and, when he looks up, is staring down the throat of an alligator.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Xiro is one of these to the point he only tried to go on the Ark because he thought it would be a love cruise where he could fornicate as much as he liked. He grows out of it when he settles down with Kairel.
• Lured into a Trap: Discussed in the animals' meeting, where a unicorn states his belief that Noah's invitation to the Ark is little more than a ruse to hunt all of the animals down.
• Monkey Morality Pose: Parodied in the scene where King Sabu announces that the time to board the Ark has come, where three monkeys do the pose and a fourth one puts his hands over his groin.
• Ms. Fanservice: Panthy for her breasts. Kairel and Bruma for their butts.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Noah's words of support to the dove he sends out with the olive branch are interpreted by Xiro in the brig as a message from God to take action.
• Predators Are Mean: Played Straight as the antagonists are a gang of predators led by the tiger Dagnino who plan to take charge before the Ark reaches land, enslave and fatten the herbivores, and forcibly make them into an assembly line of meals for themselves. Rules are established by Xiro early in the film specifically against them so they don't eat anyone, and the predators try to take advantage framing Xiro as having broken those rules. To add to the evil, Dagnino repeatedly implies he's going to use Kairel as a personal Sex Slave after he gets rid of Xiro.
• Really Gets Around: The unnamed donkey is sleeping with at least two different animals of a different species on the Ark. Guy's having a great vacation.
• Replacement Goldfish: Zig-zagged. First Xiro is with Bruma, then when she's killed by a hippopotamus he gets with Kairel just because she's the only lioness around, then he gets with Panthy who turned out to be using him, then he ends up with Kairel for good.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: There is a crocodile named Coco in Dagnino's gang.
• Savage Wolves: There is a wolf named Wolfgang (Ludo in the original Spanish dub) in Dagnino's gang.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The film opens with a montage of a vain peacock, an envious snake, a greedy jungle man, a sloth, a pineapple-like Cartoon Creature that falls in love with a pineapple, a frog that tried to eat the pineapple animal and a baboon that attacks all the others. They're eventually caught by an Evil Poacher.
• Sexy Cat Person: Panthy, the hot Femme Fatale panther.
• Shout-Out: Panthy's song is a hommage to "I Will Survive" from Gloria Gaynor.
• Spoiled Brat: Prince Xiro starts out as this before Character Development.
• Talking Animal: Obviously, but only among themselves. They are forbidden to talk to humans by an unnamed law.
• The Vamp: Panthy, who uses her charms to seduce and frame Xiro while also being in a sexual relationship with Dagnino.
• Toilet Humor: A few scenes, most notably at least two detailed shots of a massive pile of animal crap.
  • The freak accident that leads to Bruma's death is initiated when a skunk urinates on a sheep.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The two storylines rarely intersect, if only briefly and indirectly.
• Unwanted Assistance: When Xiro and Dagnino have their fight, Kairel unwittingly helps Dagnino get the upper hand twice: once when asking if he's brave enough clobber the real king, and once when she asks if he's willing to kick Xiro when he's down (Xiro even asks her to stop giving him ideas).
• Villain Song: Panthy sings a very...different version of "I Will Survive".
• Visual Pun: The chicken stripper who has breasts. Chicken strips/breasts, anyone?
• Weight Woe: Kairel is somewhat self-conscious about her weight, in no small part due to other characters calling her out over it (Bruma and later Dagnino). She even straight up asks Xiro if he has a problem with her because she's 'fat'.
• You Are Fat: From Bruma to Kairel before she boards the ark:
  Now that you're going to die from drowning, I'd love to tell you a few things. First of all, I've always hated your efficiency and intelligence, and in case you don't know what a mirror is, You. Are. Fat.

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