November 22, 2017 2 min to read

Coco

Coco is gorgeous to look at, and demonstrates Pixar's ability to immerse you in a foreign universe.

by Zach Saul

I have to confess when I saw the trailer for Coco I felt skeptical: as “music movies” are challenging to pull off and too often replace good storytelling with sing along songs. Much to my delight that was not the case in Coco. The characters in Coco are drawn with rich personalities, emotional ranges, and quirks. On the surface Coco seems like a movie about achieving you dreams and following your heart which is a pretty thematically bland. But really, Coco is a movie about how to regard, and respect those with whom we disagree. It’s easy to understand why Miguel wasn’t as enthralled by a life making shoes early in the film and preferred a life where guitars were allowed. To their credit even early in the film the makers of Coco painted Miguel’s relatives as deeply loyal and loving despite their rules and rigidness.

As he navigates through the land of the dead the filmmakers present the idea of “Legacy” in a very interesting way - you only ‘exist’ when someone on earth remembers you, and the impact you leave behind is all that sustains you in the afterlife. So despite the excitement that a life in music presents, being remembered by his family wins out. Thinking about “Legacy” through the terms not only of who remembers us - but by who holds us in high esteem (passage back into the living world is contingent upon having a photo placed on someone’s ophrenda) is an interesting counter to the self help books screaming that people “follow their hearts blindly”.

The Good: Coco is a visual gem - on par with movies like Avatar, or Wall-e and the amount of detail the artists put into the land of the dead in particular is stunning. The music in the movie is surprisingly authentic and manages carry deep resonance despite the average moviegoers lack of familiarity with it. The narrative is tight, funny, and leaves room for nuance where most animated films would talk down to their younger viewers.

The Bad: There is an absolutely atrocious 22 minute short before the film, (I realize this seems unfair) and I have to ding Coco a tad that someone from the staff didn’t chain themselves to the driveway gate of whichever idiot CEO asked to insert the Olaf movie before Coco to save the viewing public from that atrocity.