Coco

Rating

Director

Lee Unkrich

Screenplay

Lee Unkrich, Jason Katz, Matthew Aldrich, Adrian Molina

Length

1h 45m

Starring

Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camill, Alfonso Arau, Herbert Siguenza, Gabriel Iglesias, Lombardo Boyar, Ana Ofelia Murguía, Natalia Cordova-Buckley

MPAA Rating

PG for thematic elements

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Review

With a few exceptions, Pixar is one of the most creative and inventive studios, and they only produce animated features. Coco explores the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday wherein families revere their ancestors so that they may cross back into the realm of the living for one night a year.

The story centers on Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), the youngest generation in a noted family of shoemakers. His passion is music, but his family has forbidden it because of an event that happened generations prior. Hoping to win an annual contest to prove he has what it takes to become a successful musician like his idol Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), Miguel attempts to steal Ernesto’s guitar from his mausoleum, which curses him to walk the land of the dead where he must find his family and earn their blessing to return to the realm of the living.

Vibrant and gorgeous, Coco is a mesmerizing and inventive drama about finding your path when everyone in your life is forcing you down a different one. The story is richly complex with twists and turns at regular intervals. That all of them are largely predictable speaks to the success and familiarity of the Pixar formula. If the film suffers at all, it is the telegraphing of those events. That doesn’t make them any less powerful as the film is certainly filled with emotional depth.

Some minor design elements are reminiscent of Pixar’s prior success, Inside Out, but that doesn’t mean that such things aren’t stunning in their detail and depth. There has never been a Pixar film with this level of artistic complexity and that merely confirms the greatest strengths of this particular animation house.

Not to be content with just telling a story set during a Mexican holiday, Pixar shows that it firmly believes diversity begins with casting. The primary cast is filled with Latinx actors, many of whom were either born in Mexico or are of Mexican descent. When cinema seems stuck in the past where white actors played actors of other nationalities, Pixar is showing that success can still come from casting native speakers, those who not only understand the language, but also have lived the culture.

Gonzalez is a tremendous find as the film’s lead. His vocal talents, both in terms of acting and singing, are superb. Young actors with this kind of potential are rare. We will have to see how he does in live-action films to verify his burgeoning talent.

Also impressive are Bratt as the egotistical de la Cruz, who at first embraces young Miguel, but eventually comes to distrust him; Gael Garcia Bernal as Hector, the washed-up singer who wishes desperately to be remembered back home in the land of the living; Alanna Ubach as Mama Imelda, grandmother Coco’s mother and the woman whose broken heart lead to her family’s anti-music crusade; and Renee Victor as Abuelita, the caretaker of the family’s legacy.

Coco prominently features the new song, “Remember Me,” a tune sung at regular intervals by various members of the cast, each with different meaning and interpretation behind it. While the song is solid and it’s impressive that it’s written to apply so disparately to diverse situations, it pales in comparison to some of the great musical concoctions of animation history.

The heart that beats beneath Coco is one of passion, care, and tradition. It’s an exploration of family that only a compassionate studio like Pixar could convey. Among the great films of Pixar’s legacy, this stands strongly among terrific company.

Review Written

July 2, 2018