Coco

In terms of cinema, 2017 will be remembered by me as one of the worst years for animated films.  Of the 10 animated features I've seen so far this year, only two traditional Hollywood attempts (The Lego Batman Movie and Captain Underpants) were able to earn a positive response from me.  The other two that I enjoyed were foreign films that I had to go out of my way to see, as they did not earn a wide release. (Those would be Your Name from Japan and The Breadwinner from Ireland.) There's one more animated film on the way (Ferdinand in December), but honestly, how can a year that brought us The Emoji Movie not be seen as a disappointment for the artform?

Having Coco come along at the end of such a string of disappointments not only restores my hope, but serves as a reminder of what other major studios should be attempting.  With its cast of skeletons and somewhat gentle macabre tone, this may be one of the riskiest and certainly the strangest film Pixar has ever done.  This represents the studio doing something that they have never done before, and doing so in a way that is certain to delight just about anyone who watches it.  It's not just the most visually stylish film that they have attempted, but it's also quite frequently funny and highly emotional, as all the best films to come out of Pixar are.  Even if this year had been a high watermark for the animation industry, Coco would still stand out as one of the best of the year.

What the directing team of Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) and Adrian Molina have done is given us a story that starts out being simple and effective, but gradually grows in complexity, and even tackles some fairly heavy and dark themes that I will have to be careful not to spoil.  The film introduces us to Miguel Rivera (voice by Anthony Gonzales), a 12-year-old boy living in the small Mexican village of Santa Cecilia, whose main ambition in life is to play the guitar.  Unfortunately, Miguel comes from a family of shoemakers who have banished all forms of music from their family.  The reason for this lies in Miguel's distant family history.  Years ago, his great-great grandfather left his family behind in order to make it as a musician.  This act broke his wife's heart, and ever since then, the Rivera clan has pounded it into each family member's brain that music is forbidden and only causes pain.  The daughter of that musician from long ago, Mama Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia), is still alive, but she is mostly catatonic in her old age, lost in her own memories.

Miguel, however, has not given up hope on his dream.  He frequently sneaks away to his secret place where he can listen to and play the music of his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), a singer from long ago who starred in a string of movies and had multiple hit songs until he left the land of the living when during one of his concerts, a giant prop (a bell) crushed him.  Miguel is certain that there is a personal connection between him and Ernesto, and even becomes convinced that the singer just might be the ancestor that no one in his family will talk about.  Due to plot details too complicated to recap here, Miguel eventually finds himself sneaking into a mausoleum where Ernesto's guitar is on display and stealing it.  This somehow curses him, and leads the boy to crossing a bridge made of a magical marigold petals and slipping into the Underworld on the holiday Día de Muertos (The Day of the Dead).  Here, he meets his ancestors who are all skeletons, and can only cross the bridge back to the land of the living on that one special day.

It turns out that Miguel has little time for reuniting with his long-gone family members, as the longer he stays in the Underworld, he slowly starts to become a skeleton himself, and will not be able to return to where he belongs.  But little Miguel just has to track down his hero, Ernesto, and find out the truth about what happened long ago.  His friends on his journey include a loyal but stupid street dog named Dante, and eventually a scam artist skeleton named Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal), who claims to know Ernesto.  Where the story goes from here, I will not say, but the movie obviously tackles a lot of heavy themes such as family regret, being forgotten over time, and of course, unresolved pain of the past.  The movie starts out fairly lighthearted and joyous in tone, but gradually turns more serious as we learn more about the history in Miguel's family.

Beyond the story, however, Coco is simply a joy to watch.  This is easily the most colorful and complex looking film to come out of Pixar, and just about every scene is awash in color, detail and imagination.  As soon as Miguel enters the World of the Dead, the movie never stops coming up with images that we have never seen before.  Naturally, there is the city itself where the dead reside, which looks like a neon-colored blast of imagination just about anywhere you look on the screen.  And then there are the inhabitants of the city, and I don't just mean the large cast of skeletons that make up a majority of the characters.  There are a number of Spirit Animals that vary in size from small to the enormous, and each not only glow with the same imaginative colors as the city itself, but are some of the better designed fantasy creatures I've seen in a movie in a while.  This is a movie that deserves to be seen on the big screen.  Watching it at home or (Heaven forbid) on a tiny portable screen would rob the film of most of its visual power.  This is something worth paying theater price to witness.

Whenever a movie looks this good, it can be all too easy for the characters and story to get lost amongst the spectacle, but that never happens here.  Little Miguel makes for a likable child hero who never once comes across as annoying, and first-time actor Anthony Gonzales delivers a fine voice over performance.  Speaking of the voices, the cast is almost entirely Latino, and is obviously better for it.  There are perhaps a few too many characters to fit into one movie.  Of Miguel's departed family members who reside in the World of the Dead, only his Mama Imelda (Alanna Ubach) develops a real personality.  It's the sole flaw in an otherwise outstanding film, and it does nothing to diminish any of its emotional power.  But the real vocal stand outs are both Benjamin Bratt and Gael Garcia Bernal.  Bratt, in particular, impresses when he sings the film's signature tune, "Remember Me", which was written by the musical team of Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (they wrote the songs for Frozen).

Speaking of Frozen, Coco is accompanied by a 20 minute short film that plays before it called Olaf's Frozen Adventure, which features the titular snowman (voice by Josh Gad) going on his own adventure in order to find a Christmas tradition for his friends Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Princess Anna (Kristen Bell).  This was originally planned as a TV special, but for whatever reason, it was upgraded to a theatrical release.  And while it is certainly entertaining enough, at a full 20 minutes, it does go on quite long, and may find some viewers getting restless for the actual movie to start.  I usually have no problem with an animated short playing before the main feature, but this really should have stayed as the TV special it was planned to be, as its somewhat stiff animation really is shown off on the big screen.

Despite this, Coco has all the humor, heart and emotion that we have come to expect from Pixar, and seldom get from some of their recent efforts like the Cars sequels.  It's a lush and lavish love letter to Mexican culture, but it's also a genuinely involving and at times powerful experience.  This is the kind of animated feature that adults should seek out even if they don't have kids to go with them.  But this is more than just a great animated film.  It's simply a great movie in general, and one of the best of the year.

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