movie review for coco

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"Coco" is the sprightly story of a young boy who wants to be a musician and somehow finds himself communing with talking skeletons in the land of the dead. Directed by Lee Unkrich (" Toy Story 3 ") and veteran Pixar animator Adrian Molina , and drawing heavily on Mexican folklore and traditional designs, it has catchy music, a complex but comprehensible plot, and bits of domestic comedy and media satire. Most of the time the movie is a knockabout slapstick comedy with a " Back to the Future " feeling, staging grand action sequences and feeding audiences new plot information every few minutes, but of course, being a Pixar film, "Coco" is also building toward emotionally overwhelming moments, so stealthily that you may be surprised to find yourself wiping away a tear even though the studio has been using the sneak-attack playbook for decades.

The film's hero, twelve-year old Miguel Riviera (voice by Anthony Gonzalez ), lives in the small town of Santa Cecilia. He’s a goodhearted child who loves to play guitar and idolizes the greatest popular singer-songwriter of the 1920s and '30s, Ernesto de la Cruz ( Benjamin Bratt ), who was killed when a huge church bell fell on his head. But Miguel has to busk in secret because his family has banned its members from performing music ever since Miguel's great-great-grandfather left, abandoning his loved ones to selfishly pursue his dreams of stardom. At least that’s the official story passed down through the generations; it’ll be challenged as the film unfolds, not through a traditional detective story (although there’s a mystery element to “Coco”) but through an “ Alice in Wonderland ” journey to the Land of the Dead, which the hero accesses through the tomb of his ancestors.

Family and legacy as expressed through storytelling and song: this is the deeper preoccupation of “Coco.” One of the most fascinating things about the movie is the way it builds its plot around members of Miguel’s family, living and dead, as they battle to determine the official narrative of Miguel’s great-great grandfather and what his disappearance from the narrative meant for the extended clan. The title character is the hero’s great-grandmother (Renee Victor), who was traumatized by her dad’s disappearance. In her old age, she has become a nearly silent presence, sitting in the corner and staring blankly ahead, as if hypnotized by a sweet, old film perpetually unreeling in her mind.

The machinations that get Miguel to the other side are too complicated to explain in a review, though they’re comprehensible as you watch the movie. Suffice to say that Miguel gets there, teams up with a melancholy goofball named Hector ( Gael Garcia Bernal), and has to pose as one of the dead with the aid of skeletal facepaint, but that (like Marty McFly returning to the 1950s to make sure his mom ends up with his dad in “Future”) the longer Miguel stays on the other side, the more likely he is to end up actually dead.

I’m reluctant to describe the film’s plot in too much detail because, even though every twist seems obvious in retrospect, Molina and Matthew Aldrich ’s script frames each one so that seems delightful and inevitable. Many of them are conveyed through a stolen family photograph that Miguel brings with him to the Land of the Dead. The deployment of the photo is a great example of how to tell a story through pictures, or more accurately, with a picture . Somebody’s face has been torn out; there’s a guitar that proves to be important later, and there are other ways in which visual information has been withheld from Miguel (and us) so that it can be revealed or restored when the time is right, completing and correcting an incomplete or distorted picture, and "picture.”

What’s freshest, though, is the tone and outlook of the film. “Coco” opened in Mexico a month before it opened in the USA and is already the highest grossing film of all time there. It assumes a non-American point-of-view on spirituality and culture—not in a touristy or “thought experiment” sort of way, but as if it were merely the latest product of an alternate universe Pixar Mexicano that has existed for just as long as the other one. The film’s stable of voice actors reads like a Who’s Who of Latin-American talent: the ensemble includes Edward James Olmos , Alfonso Arau , Ana Ofelia Murguia, Alanna Ubach and, in a small role, to my surprise and astonishment, playwright Octavio Solis , who was one of my teachers in high school back in Dallas. Michael Giacchino's score is unsurprisingly excellent, as are the original songs—in particular, the future Oscar winner " Remember Me ," the greatest tear-eruption mechanism to accompany a Pixar release since the " Toy Story 2 " centerpiece "When She Loved Me."

Like most Pixar productions, this one is filled with homages to film history in general and animation history in particular. I was especially fond of the references to the dancing skeletons that seemed to pop up constantly in cartoon shorts from the 1930s. There’s a touch of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki in the film’s matter-of-fact depiction of the dead interacting with the living, as well as its portrayal of certain creatures, such as a goofy, goggle-eyed dog named Dante (modeled on Xoloitzcuintli, the national dog of Mexico) and a gigantic flying dragon-type beast with the personality of a plump old housecat.

Also notable are the film's widescreen compositions, which put lots of characters in the same frame and shoot them from the waist up or from head-to-toe, in the manner of old musicals, or Hollywood comedies from the eighties like "9 to 5" or " Tootsie ." The direction lets you appreciate how the characters interact with each other and with their environments and lets you decide what to look at. At first this approach seems counter-intuitive for a movie filled with fantastic creatures, structures and situations, but it ends up being effective for that very reason: it makes you feel as though you're seeing a record of things that are actually happening, and it makes "Coco" feel gentle and unassuming even though it's a big, brash, loud film.

I had some minor quibbles about “Coco” while I was watching it, but I can’t remember what they were. This film is a classic.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Coco (2017)

Rated PG for thematic elements.

109 minutes

Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel (voice)

Gael García Bernal as Hector (voice)

Benjamin Bratt as Ernesto de la Cruz (voice)

Renée Victor as Abuelita (voice)

Ana Ofelia Murguía as Mama Coco (voice)

Alanna Ubach as Mama Imelda (voice)

Edward James Olmos as Chicharron (voice)

Gabriel Iglesias as Head Clerk (voice)

Cheech Marin as Corrections Officer (voice)

Alfonso Aráu as Papa Julio (voice)

Lee Unkrich

Co-Director

Adrian Molina

Writer (original story by)

Matthew Aldrich

Cinematographer

Matt Aspbury
Danielle Feinberg
Steve Bloom
Michael Giacchino

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Coco Reviews

It is an incredibly resonant, emotive work, even if its story feels a little cobbled together from past Pixar films.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2024

Coco is a story full of emotion and deep entertainment. The proposal emphasizes the importance of traditions and family, but stripping them of their mandates to offer their members listening and understanding.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 28, 2023

A dance of layered visuals and eye-popping patterns, Coco is well balanced with the understated...

Full Review | Dec 14, 2023

Coco is an incredible film, that moves me emotionally more with each viewing. The story, the animation style, the colors, the look at family, and the wonderful music never fails to make me cry.

Full Review | Apr 26, 2023

A fine addition to the Pixar legacy… a very sweet film about family, very thoughtfully put together. It has that unmistakable mixture of comedy and sentiment that you associate with a Pixar movie. Great fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2022

Coco is a film that reminds us of the effect and importance of mise-en-scène, even when it has been assembled by animators and computers.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 17, 2022

The film falls in line with some of Pixars best films and is an absolute must watch for any fan of film especially the Latino community. Coco gives the community more reason to be proud to be Latino.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 18, 2022

It's a feast for the eyes, the cast is pitch perfect, and the music is wonderful.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2021

Coco is a colourful, joyous and utterly charming Pixar film.

Full Review | Oct 29, 2021

Coco bursts with color and life, just like we might expect of a film by Pixar Animation Studios...

Full Review | Aug 24, 2021

It's just about a perfect combination of heart and authenticity (to a culture and place) in a story that delivers laughs, gasps, and sniffles in ample amounts.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2021

It's tender and kind, but doesn't shy away from the reality we all must face.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2021

Coco is another brilliant installment into an already near flawless collection of films (okay, all but those Cars movies).

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 8, 2021

Coco isn't a musical, but the soundtrack will top your Spotify Most Played list for weeks.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 28, 2021

An unexpectedly brilliant and dynamic story about lineage, connection, and self-discovery.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2021

A heartfelt tribute to Mexican culture but more than that it is a universal story about the importance of family that is heartfelt but never saccharine.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 3, 2021

What makes the film so heartfelt and resonant is its rich exploration of family, love and memory.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2020

Thematically, Coco shows the importance of family, while respecting the elderly and remembering the dead. It's not too often family films highlight that...

Full Review | Dec 23, 2020

Equal parts jokey and mature, fun-loving and melancholy.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 5, 2020

A profound film going experience that is fun for the whole family as well.

Full Review | Oct 9, 2020

Screen Rant

Coco review: pixar's gorgeous celebration of family & music.

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7 hunger games theories that i'd love to see come true in the new hunger games movie & book, what martial arts style iko uwais uses in his movies, coco is a heartwarming story about family and a well-crafted coming of age tale steeped beautifully in the traditions of mexico's dia de los muertos..

Pixar's latest offering, Coco , is the animation studio's second premiere of 2017, following Cars 3 this summer, and the first original, non-sequel since The Good Dinosaur in 2015. Pixar has made a name for itself over the last two decades as an animation house that infuses compelling concepts with a great deal of heart in order to entertain audiences young and old. Though there's been a debate about whether Pixar should focus more on original ideas over sequels to their beloved films, Coco is proof the Disney-owned animation studio can still come up with new concepts with as much magic and heart as their first string of hits. Coco is a heartwarming story about family and a well-crafted coming of age tale steeped beautifully in the traditions of Mexico's Día de los Muertos.

Coco tells the story of young Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), who is descended from a family of shoemakers - but who has no desire to join the family business. Instead, Miguel dreams of becoming a musician and following in the footsteps of his idol, the greatest musician to ever live, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). However, there's one major factor preventing Miguel from going after his dreams: his family's decades-long ban on music that has been passed down through the generations. As the story goes, Miguel's great great grandfather was a musician who abandoned his family to follow his dreams, leaving Mamá Imelda (Alanna Ubach) to raise Miguel's great grandmother, Mamá Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguía), on her own.

When Miguel's family discover he's been idolizing the music of Ernesto de la Cruz and teaching himself how to play guitar in secret, they forbid him from pursuing a career as a musician. In order to prove he can follow in the footsteps of Ernesto, Miguel steals the famed musician's guitar on Día de los Muertos and accidentally transports himself to the Land of the Dead. Though Miguel meets his deceased ancestors, they also don't understand Miguel's love of music, and he sets out in search of Ernesto with the help of charming con man Hector (Gael García Bernal), who needs Miguel's help in order to visit the Land of the Living. However, Miguel must find a way home before the sun rises, marking the end of Día de los Muertos, or else he'll be trapped in the Land of the Dead forever.

For Coco , Pixar assembled a team that are well versed in the animation studio's offerings - and it shows insofar as the film presents the best of what the studio is known for, while offering a completely new and compelling adventure. The movie was directed by Pixar veteran Lee Unkrich ( Toy Story 3 ), and co-directed by Adrian Molina ( The Good Dinosaur ); the latter co-wrote the script with Matthew Aldrich ( Cleaner ), based on a story by Unkrich, Molina, Aldrich, and Jason Katz ( Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation ). Unkrich reteamed with Toy Story 3 producer Darla K. Anderson, while fellow Pixar vet Michael Giacchino ( Inside Out, Jurassic World ) served as composer. Music is, of course, an integral aspect of the film, so Gonzalez and Bratt lend their voices to a number of catchy and fun songs in Coco - though it's not quite a musical in the vein of Disney's typical animated offerings.

The story of Coco is a rather typical hero's journey/coming of age tale, with Miguel going on a grand adventure in the Land of the Dead and learning an important lesson about both himself and his family along the way. Miguel's motivation throughout the movie - wanting to follow his dream, but not feeling understood by his family - provides for an exceptionally universal jumping off point, and acts as the anchor around which the entire film's emotional arc revolves. Even so, there are plenty of twists and turns throughout the movie that prevent the story from feeling stale; in that way, Coco somewhat resembles a telenovela, with a big third act twist that completely upends the status quo of the movie. Still, this twist only helps to further develop the main theme of the movie, which is the identity of self vs the identity of family.

Still, while the story of Coco is a major strength, it's heightened and contrasted by the colorful backdrop of the Land of the Dead. The expansive world is beautifully animated - from the wide shots of the Land as Miguel enters, to each setting as he journeys through the world's various neighborhoods. As varied as as any real world city, and populated by skeletons resembling calaveras as well as neon-colored spirit guides, the Land of the Dead in Coco is absolutely eye-catching and a wondrous thing to behold, brought to life superbly by the animators at Pixar. Further, the mythology of the world is well established so that viewers with all ranges of knowledge about Día de los Muertos and Mexican culture can understand the rules of this afterlife.

Beyond the Land of the Dead, Coco brings Miguel's home and family to life with bright, vibrant colors in the Land of the Living as well. On the whole, Coco utilizes Pixar's typical 3D CGI animation style to craft a rich world full of depth - both for the living characters and those who are dead. Additionally, Miguel and his entire family are brought to life with varying levels of development. Because the family is so large, Coco mainly focuses on Miguel and his great great grandparents, since the ancestors started the rift in the family that's felt by Miguel in present day. Still, the story provides little details about Miguel's various family members to give them some characterization and offer more depth to the characters than viewers may expect. The result is a story full of heart and drama following characters that the audience can't help but love like their own family.

All in all, Coco is a fantastic addition to the Pixar library with all the heart and emotion of the animation studio's best offerings, as well as visuals that surpass even the company's most eye-catching films. Its story is heartwarming and universal, and richly textured thanks to its roots in Mexican culture. Though some elements of Coco are a bit dark for very young children, Pixar's latest is perhaps the perfect holiday film for families - and it will no doubt be entertaining for Pixar fans of any age. Additionally, with the exceptional visuals, Coco may be worth a 3D or IMAX viewing. Altogether, Coco has all the makings of another Pixar classic, proving the animation studio's original ideas are just as strong as they ever were.

Coco is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It runs 109 minutes and is rated PG for thematic elements.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

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Stunningly animated, poignant tribute to family and culture.

Coco Movie Poster: Miguel and Hector stand back to back on a path made out of marigold petals

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Viewers may learn about some of the cultural tradi

Many positive messages: Remember that your family

Miguel is talented, gifted, and enthusiastic. He m

Among the film's four directors and writers, Adria

For those who aren't familiar with Day of the Dead

Discussion of Mamá Imelda and her husband's love s

Infrequent use of words including "stupid," "dumb,

Nothing in the film itself, but Disney/Pixar films

Adult characters drink in a couple of scenes: a sh

Educational Value

Viewers may learn about some of the cultural traditions (and creatures) surrounding Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead and what it's like to live in a Mexican family dedicated to a craft (in this case, shoemaking). Kids may also learn a bit about Mexican music styles.

Positive Messages

Many positive messages: Remember that your family loves and wants the best of and for you. Love and accept who you are, and try to persevere and follow your dreams. Running away doesn't solve anything. Teamwork and asking for help are important. Gifts and talents shouldn't be ignored or suppressed; you shouldn't have to choose between your family and doing what you love. Unconditional love is powerful. It's never too late to forgive someone. Be grateful for what you have.

Positive Role Models

Miguel is talented, gifted, and enthusiastic. He makes some impulsive, risky, iffy decisions (from stealing de la Cruz's guitar to running away from those who want to help him), but he ultimately recognizes the value of his family. Mamá Imelda and Abuelita are very strict but also loving and affectionate; it takes time, but they eventually listen to what Miguel is trying to tell them. Hector is a trickster, but he also wants to redeem himself in his family's eyes.

Diverse Representations

Among the film's four directors and writers, Adrian Molina is Mexican American and openly gay. (The other three filmmakers are White men.) Though the film had a rocky start with Latino communities, Disney/Pixar course-corrected and ended up receiving generally positive reviews by Mexican and Latino critics . Coco has a nearly all-Latino voice cast, with most actors of Mexican heritage. It showcases a Mexican holiday and, through Disney and Pixar's massive scale, brings Day of the Dead traditions to a global audience. Though the main characters are all boys/men -- Miguel, the celebrity he idolizes, and his dad -- women have important supporting roles and are portrayed as strong matriarchs. The film has age diversity and encourages a deep respect for family elders. A character with dementia has a backstory and is loved.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

For those who aren't familiar with Day of the Dead traditions (skeletons, makeup to look like skeletons, beheaded/limbless skeletons, etc.), there's potentially frightening imagery throughout the movie. Some violent moments are played for humor, like scenes in which a character is crushed by a large bell. Skeletons come apart frequently. A character falls from a great height. Another is shown succumbing to poison. Characters are chased/pursued; some tension/peril as a result. Sad moment when a Land of the Dead figure dissolves into dust; later, another popular character appears to fade, which could upset kids. Tear-jerking climactic sequence. Pepita, a large spirit guide animal, is like a huge flying griffin/panther, and she can be intimidating (growling, pouncing, etc.). Arguing; grown-ups yell at a kid.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Discussion of Mamá Imelda and her husband's love story. A married couple embraces. Kissing/romance in a movie-within-the-movie. A "nude" skeleton poses for an artist (played for humor).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent use of words including "stupid," "dumb," "jerks," "hate," and "bum."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing in the film itself, but Disney/Pixar films always have plenty of merchandise tie-ins, from apparel to games to toys.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adult characters drink in a couple of scenes: a shot in one scene and drinks at a party.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Coco is a vibrant Disney/Pixar film that explores the traditions of the Day of the Dead, a child's desire to become a musician despite his family's wishes, and the power of unconditional love. Told from the point of view of Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez ), a young boy who ends up in the Land of the Dead, the movie -- which features an all-star Latino voice cast (including Gael García Bernal and Benjamin Bratt ), as well as a Latino co-director and many Latino crew members -- is a tribute to Mexican traditions and customs. The Land of the Dead has some potentially disturbing imagery, but most kids will probably get used to all of the skeletons quickly. A few moments of life-or-death peril are fraught with tension, but none of the major characters die (at least, who aren't already dead). There's also some drinking by adult characters (a shot, cocktails at a party) and a few uses of words like "stupid." While all is well in the end, the movie can be sad (as with most Pixar films, it's likely some viewers will cry), especially for those who've lost beloved relatives. But it also has powerful themes of perseverance, teamwork, and gratitude and encourages audiences to love and appreciate their family and always follow their dreams. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (150)
Kids say (170)

Based on 150 parent reviews

It was too soon for my 6 years old son.

Not for kids - bad message, what's the story.

COCO follows Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez ), a young Mexican boy born into a family of zapateros (shoemakers). For generations, the family has imposed a ban on playing or listening to music because, decades earlier, Miguel's great-great-grandfather left his great-great-grandmother Imelda ( Alanna Ubach ) and their young daughter, Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguía), to become a musician. But Miguel secretly plays the guitar and yearns to become a famous musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz ( Benjamin Bratt ), the long-dead singer/actor from Miguel's hometown. On the Day of the Dead, Miguel fights with his family, steals de la Cruz's guitar from a crypt, and somehow gets transported to the Land of the Dead. There, Miguel meets up with his deceased relatives and learns that he can only return to the world of the living with a dead ancestor's blessing. Because Mamá Imelda inserts a no-music clause into her blessing, Miguel flees her and the rest of his skeletal relatives in search of de la Cruz, whom he believes to be his great-great-grandfather. Instead, Miguel teams up with Hector ( Gael García Bernal ), a scheming skeleton who claims to know de la Cruz, on his journey to find the dead idol and earn his blessing, musician to musician.

Is It Any Good?

Colorful, beautifully animated, and culturally vibrant, Coco is an affecting, multilayered coming-of-age drama. Miguel just wants to make music, even though it's forbidden to him because his family believes that music cursed them. Gonzalez, a tween who performs Mariachi music, is an ideal pick to voice the movie's main character. It's clear that, like his animated alter ego, he's a talented performer. Featuring "Remember Me," an original song from Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (the husband-and-wife team behind the Frozen soundtrack), and other songs written and produced by a team of Mexican songwriters and consultants, Coco boasts an authentic soundtrack and a memorable score by award-winning composer Michael Giacchino.

The voice cast is nearly all Latino (and most have Mexican heritage), with internationally renowned Mexican American actor Edward James Olmos and comedians Cheech Marin and Gabriel Iglesias voicing supporting characters. Bratt (who's half Peruvian) has just the right timbre of gravitas to play de la Cruz, a famous and vainglorious musician who died at the peak of his career. As for the titular character, she's Miguel's great-grandmother, and her scenes with Miguel will bring a tear to even the most jaded viewer's eyes. The movie will be especially moving for anyone who's had to separate from their family, whether because of death or another reason. But of all the movie's relationships, it's really Miguel's with Hector that's the most nuanced and fascinating. Bernal's Hector is so much more than he seems, and whether he's pretending to be Frida Kahlo (the ghost of Kahlo herself also makes an appearance), playing the guitar, or pleading his case to be remembered, he's the film's second hero. Like the best Pixar movies, Coco is ultimately a story about the power of relationships and why familia is so important.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the popularity of stories about young characters who must go on a dangerous journey to find out about themselves. What does Miguel learn in Coco ? How do his experiences in the Land of the Dead help him grow?

Talk about the movie's theme of family duty vs. personal ambition. Which characters in Coco are role models , and which character strengths do they demonstrate? How are gratitude , perseverance , and teamwork especially encouraged?

Did you think any parts of the movie were scary ? How much scary stuff can young kids handle? Who do you think is the ideal audience for this movie? Why?

Did you already know about the Day of the Dead? If not, what did you learn about the holiday? How does your family pay tribute to relatives and loved ones after they've passed away? Which other Mexican traditions and values does the movie promote? Which holidays, music, and other cultural traditions do you celebrate with your family?

Did you notice that characters speak both English and Spanish in the movie? For bilingual and multilingual families: Why do you think it's important or useful to speak more than one language? How does language connect you with your heritage -- and your family?

Movie Details

In theaters : November 22, 2017
On DVD or streaming : February 27, 2018
Cast : Benjamin Bratt , Gael Garcia Bernal , Anthony Gonzalez
Directors : Lee Unkrich , Adrian Molina
Inclusion Information : Latino directors, Indigenous actors, Latino actors
Studio : Pixar Animation Studios
Genre : Family and Kids
Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Holidays
Character Strengths : Gratitude , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 109 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : thematic elements
Awards : Academy Award , Common Sense Selection , Golden Globe , Kids' Choice Award
Last updated : May 5, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘coco’: film review.

Steeped in Mexican culture and folklore, 'Coco' ranks among Disney-Pixar's most engaging efforts.

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Michael Rechtshaffen

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Dia de los Muertos, the multi-day Mexican-originated holiday honoring dead family members and friends, proves to have a remarkably revitalizing effect on Pixar, as evidenced by the truly resplendent Coco .

Not only does the Disney outfit’s 19th feature, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, emerge as Pixar’s most original effort since Inside Out , it’s also among its most emotionally resonant, touching on themes of belonging common to Finding Dory and the Unkrich-directed Toy Story 3 .

Release date: Nov 22, 2017

Delivering a universal message about family bonds while adhering to folkloric traditions free of the watering down or whitewashing that have often typified Americanized appropriations of cultural heritage, the gorgeous production also boasts vibrant visuals and a peerless voice cast populated almost entirely by Mexican and Latino actors.

Although not due to arrive in North America until Thanksgiving, the film had its premiere Friday at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico and will open there the following week, just ahead of Dia de los Muertos festivities.

It’s a safe bet that audiences the world over will go loco for Coco .

Despite the title, the lead character is, in fact, Miguel (terrifically voiced by young Anthony Gonzalez), a 12-year-old resident of the town of Santa Cecilia who dreams of becoming a famous musician just like his idol, the late, great Ernesto de la Cruz (played with pitch-perfect grandiosity by Benjamin Bratt).

Only trouble is, Miguel’s family has forbidden any form of music in their household for the past several generations — ever since his great-great-grandfather was said to have abandoned his loved ones in pursuit of his singing career.

Despite the strong-armed disapproval of resident family enforcer Abuelita (Renee Victor), Miguel sets off to follow his muse, and, in the process, finds himself subject to an otherworldly occurrence that results in his only being visible to those who have crossed over from the Land of the Dead to take part in Dia de los Muertos celebrations.

Miguel’s only hope of reversing the effect is to be blessed with a magical marigold petal by his great-great-grandmother, Mama Imelda (Alanna Noel Ubach), but she’ll only comply under the condition that he’ll forever renounce any and all musical aspirations.

At every imaginative juncture, the filmmakers (the screenplay is credited to Pixar veteran Molina and Matthew Aldrich) create a richly woven tapestry of comprehensively researched storytelling, fully dimensional characters, clever touches both tender and amusingly macabre and vivid, beautifully textured visuals.

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Film Review: Pixar’s ‘Coco’

Pixar's latest diversifies the studio's character lineup, if not necessarily its feel-good formula, building musical journey around the look and feel of Mexico's Día de Muertos.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Progression Image 3 of 3: Final Frame..ASPIRING MUSICIAN — In Disney•Pixar’s “Coco,” Miguel (voice of newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like the celebrated Ernesto de la Cruz (voice of Benjamin Bratt). But when he strums his idol’s guitar, he sets off a mysterious chain of events. Directed by Lee Unkrich, co-directed by Adrian Molina and produced by Darla K. Anderson, “Coco” opens in theaters Nov. 22, 2017.

Conceived as a vibrant celebration of Mexican culture, writer-director Lee Unkrich ’s “ Coco ” is the 19th feature from Pixar Animation Studios and the first to seriously deal with the deficit of nonwhite characters in its films — so far limited to super-sidekick Frozone in “The Incredibles,” tagalong Russell in “Up” and Mindy Kaling’s green-skinned Disgust in “Inside Out.” It’s a point worth making from the outset, not so much for political reasons (although they matter) but to indicate how this effective yet hardly exceptional addition to the Pixar oeuvre finds at least one significant front on which to innovate, even while coloring comfortably within the lines on practically everything else.

Like Remy, the rodent hero of “Ratatouille” who dreamed of working in a French restaurant, 12-year-old Miguel Rivera (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) has just one passion in life: He wants to play the guitar. Unfortunately for him, Miguel belongs to a family of humble shoemakers where music has been forbidden for generations, ever since his great-great-grandfather walked out on his wife and daughter to pursue a career as a singer. Only in folk tales and cartoons do human beings make such inflexible rules, though it certainly simplifies the movie’s conflict.

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Like so many Pixar films before it, “Coco” indulges the belief that kids know best, while it’s up to adults to come around. In the case of this particular misunderstood child, Miguel’s job is to persuade his family to change their minds, preferably by performing in the annual Día de Muertos talent show in the town plaza. That would be story enough to drive a live-action movie, but in “Coco,” Miguel’s musical stash is discovered the day before the competition, and his defiance so upsets to his abuelita (Renee Victor) that she smashes the boy’s beloved guitar.

Rather than give up, Miguel sneaks into Ernesto de la Cruz’s mausoleum on Día de Muertos and steals the star’s prized guitar, unleashing a curse that forces him to travel to the Land of the Dead, where Miguel must seek his family’s forgiveness, as well as their blessing, before being allowed to return home — an Orpheus-like katabasis (as such epic journeys are called) in which he must travel the underworld and back to set things right. The rules of this quasi-religious (but mostly superstitious) Land of the Dead are plenty complicated but stated clearly enough for even little children to follow.

After reuniting with his relatives (who live on in skeleton form, rendered in such a way that they’re far less scary than anything in Tim Burton’s ghoulish “The Nightmare Before Christmas” ensemble), Miguel is torn between obeying his family and trying to find Ernesto, whom he’s come to believe was the wannabe musician who abandoned his family so many generations before. For Mexican audiences — or those who live in California, Texas, or any place with a visible Latino presence — the cultural iconography of the Land of the Dead ought to look quite familiar, as Unkrich (who previously oversaw “Toy Story 3”) embraces and incorporates the customs and folklore of Día de Muertos into the very fabric of the film.

From the altar-like ofrendas where family photos pay tribute to loved ones lost (whose spirits remain alive in this parallel realm, so long as they are remembered by the living) to the brilliant-orange marigold petals that serve as a bridge between the two worlds, Pixar’s art department makes stunning use of the holiday’s signature elements. The film’s elaborate prologue unfolds across a series of papel picado banners (the cut-tissue-paper streamers that line the streets during times of celebration), calling for a unique style of moving-silhouette animation reminiscent of the great Michel Ocelot. On the other side, fantastical, fluorescent-bright alebrijes (or spirit animals inspired by the country’s colorful folk-art sculptures) keep the dead company — while also providing a convenient excuse for Miguel’s Xoloitzcuintli street-dog sidekick, Dante, to accompany him on his journey.

So often, cartoon animal companions feel like concessions to the studio’s marketing department, but Dante serves as both an affectionate nod to Mexico’s oldest breed of dog — a scraggly, hairless variety whose daffy expression, googly eyes and lolling tongue recall Ed, “The Lion King’s” loony hyena, in less menacing form — and a kind of hapless underworld Lassie, providing comic relief and rescue opportunities in equal measure. The character who takes slightly longer to win us over is Hector (Gael García Bernal), a gangly con artist who comes to Miguel’s assistance, hoping that by helping the boy back to the real world, he might be able to cross over as well.

By this point, the Pixar machine has gotten so efficient that watching its movies can feel less like hearing a good story than sitting in on a well-polished pitch meeting. In “Coco” — which is named after Miguel’s oldest living relative, exquisitely rendered as a damaged soul wrapped in wrinkles — there’s a clockwork sense of what every character, detail and scene is doing (the mariachi band with which Miguel performs reappears later to help him sneak into Ernesto’s compound, etc.), giving the film an almost boilerplate efficiency right up until the big confrontation between Miguel and his idol, which doesn’t go at all how one might think.

It’s strange for Pixar — whose every employee clearly believes in the importance of creativity, sacrificing time with their own families to bring these incredible stories to life — to suddenly turn cynical toward showbiz. Sure, “nothing is more important than family,” but do Unkrich and co-writers Jason Katz, Matthew Aldrich and Adrian Molina really believe that, or are they spouting the platitudes that audiences want to hear?

Though undeniably gorgeous, none of this feels terribly original, from the film’s message to the look of the Mexican underworld, which so recently inspired another computer-animated feature, 2014’s “The Book of Life.” A bit too close to that toon for comfort, “Coco” feels like Unkrich and his story team (so good at perfecting and/or “plussing” Pixar’s projects) watched “The Book of Life” and thought, “Hey, we’ve got a better idea!” or “We can fix this!” and proceeded to make their own Día de Muertos movie.

In any case, it works: “Coco’s” creators clearly had the perfect ending in mind before they’d nailed down all the other details, and though the movie drags in places, and features a few too many childish gags (like skeletons who snap off their own arms and use them as nunchaku), the story’s sincere emotional resolution earns the sobs it’s sure to inspire, inevitably bringing Ernesto’s catchy “Remember Me” back around in a fresh context (if only the song itself were more worthy of remembering). In an era when young people are so easily seduced by celebrity, “Coco” reveals the emptiness of such adulation, poignantly teaching kids to preserve and respect the memory of their elders while reminding them that the source of true creativity is so often personal.

Reviewed at Frank G. Wells screening room, Burbank, Oct. 18, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 105 MIN.

Production: (Animated) A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Disney presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios production. Producer: Darla K. Anderson. Executive producer: John Lasseter. Director: Lee Unkrich. Co-director: Adrian Molina. Screenplay: Molina, Matthew Aldrich; story: Unkrich, Molina, Aldrich, Jason Katz. Camera (color, widescreen): Danielle Feinberg. Editors: Steve Bloom, Unkrich. Music: Michael Giacchino.
With: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt , Alanna Ubach, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau, Sofía Espinosa, Selene Luna, Ana Ofelia Murguia, Renee Victor, Luis Valdez, Herbert Siguenza, Carla Medina, Edward James Olmos

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‘Coco’: Pixar’s Day of the Dead tale comes to dazzling life

The visuals and deeply moving storytelling make “Coco” one of the best pictures Pixar has ever produced. Rating: 4 stars out of 4.

In Spanish, it’s “heart.” And in “Coco,” it’s heart that’s overflowing with love, poignancy, humor, color and music.

Such rich, glowing colors. You can lose yourself in “Coco’s” extraordinary imagery.

Movie Review ★★★★

‘Coco,’ with the voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renée Victor. Directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, from a screenplay by Molina and Matthew Aldrich. 109 minutes. Rated PG for thematic elements. Several theaters.

Such rousing, touching music. Set-piece production numbers drive the narrative while they uplift the spirit.

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Such a triumph for Pixar. Dazzling visuals along with intricately structured and deeply moving storytelling are the hallmarks of the best of the studio’s animated movies. “Coco” has those in spades, which puts it right up there with “Up” and the “Toy Story” trilogy in the topmost ranks of Pixar pictures. Small wonder, considering Lee Unkrich, its co-director (Adrian Molina shares directorial credit), won an Oscar for his direction of “Toy Story 3.”

Set in a village in rural Mexico, “Coco” is a celebration of that country’s culture, particularly the close connectivity of generations. The title is the name of the great-grandmother of the central character, a high-spirited, music-mad 12-year-old boy named Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez). Four generations live under the family roof, and the kid is very close to his Mama Coco. Rendered nearly mute by the infirmities of advanced age, she seems a peripheral figure at first. But the fact that the movie is named for her is a key clue to a mystery that is central to the story.

The tightness of the generational connectivity stretches beyond the living to the dead. Departed ancestors — whimsically rendered skeletons — are vividly present on the Día de Muertos holiday, when the picture takes place. They cross from the Land of the Dead — a spectacularly rendered confection of towering, brightly lit buildings — to the Land of the Living on that special day via an immense bridge made of sparkling orange marigold petals (a stunning sight). There, they mingle with the living at the village cemetery.

A flash of accidental magic sends Miguel across the bridge to the Land of the Dead, where he encounters the spirits of departed forebears, along with his musical idol, vainglorious musician/actor Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), and a fast-talking clownish bag of bones named Héctor (Gael García Bernal).

It’s Héctor who is the source of much of “Coco’s” humor, literally falling to pieces on several occasions and then awkwardly reassembling his wayward bones with lightning speed.

But appearances are deceiving. The clown is actually a tragic figure who is slowly fading away because if the dead are no longer remembered by the living, they vanish for all time. Héctor’s sole link to the Land of the Living is a tenuous and increasingly fragile one.

This theme that the dead live on through the memories of the living gives “Coco” its poignant power, and that power makes this movie uniquely memorable.

Coco Review

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Pixar’s journey to the Land of the Dead was an ambitious undertaking, even for a studio that’s produced some of the best-animated films of the past 20 years. But Coco wonderfully explores familial themes, identity, and learning what it means to grow up in a world that isn’t perfect. Miguel’s trip is a representation of what it means to grow up and learn the truths about how life works outside the safe confines of home. Hector, Miguel and even the slobbery dog Dante are all characters I won’t soon forget.

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“Coco,” a Story About Borders and Love, Is a Definitive Movie for This Moment

By Jia Tolentino

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One weekend last fall, my boyfriend, Andrew, whose favorite movies include “Deliverance” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” went off to go see the Pixar movie “Coco,” by himself, and came back in a delirium of happy, wistful tears. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, watching him wheel his bike back into the living room. I hadn’t moved from my permanent station behind my computer monitor, a hub for the ongoing erosion of my belief in human good. “You have to go to see ‘Coco,’ ” he croaked. “You have to. It’s, like, the best movie of all time.”

I assumed that he was being hyperbolic, until a night in April when I invited three friends over to watch “Coco,” all of us first-time viewers with high expectations. People we knew—people in their twenties and thirties, few of them with children—had been freaking out about “Coco” in group texts and random conversations, saying things like, “I cried so hard I started choking,” and “I’ve watched it five times this month on airplanes.” “Hey ppl over here getting drunk and watching Coco just fyi,” I texted Andrew, who was still at the office. In return, I received a series of panicked instructions to not start without him. “You have already seen it….” I texted. “I DON’T CARE!!!!!!!” he texted back. “DON’T START WITHOUT ME!!!!”

We started without him. Andrew came home a third of the way into the movie, cracked a beer, and silently sat down on the floor of the living room to watch. By the end, every one of us was crying through a manic grin. “I told you,” he said. “It’s the best movie of all time.”

In the weeks since that viewing, “Coco” love has continued to spread among my demographic—thanks, in part, to the movie’s release on Netflix in May. “Coco” is unlike any film I can think of: it presents death as a life-affirming inevitability; its story line about grudges and abandonment makes you feel less alone. The protagonist, Miguel, is a twelve-year-old boy in the fictional Mexican town of Santa Cecilia—named for the patron saint of musicians—and he is trying to get out from under the shadow of his great-great-grandfather, who left his family to pursue a career as a musician. His wife, the ferocious Mamá Imelda, was left to take care of their young daughter, Coco. She instituted a permanent household ban on music and started making shoes.

We meet Coco as an old woman. Her daughter, Miguel’s grandmother, now runs the family and its shoemaking business with an iron chancla . Earnest, sweet Miguel teaches himself to play the guitar in the attic, watching and re-watching tapes of the bygone star Ernesto de la Cruz. On the Day of the Dead, he accidentally shatters a framed photograph on the family ofrenda , then spots a hidden detail in the picture, one that makes him suspect that his wayward ancestor was in fact de la Cruz himself. He sprints to the town mausoleum, hoping to borrow de la Cruz’s guitar and prove the value of music to his family. Instead, the guitar turns Miguel invisible, and whisks him across a skybridge covered in thick, soft marigold petals that glow like lava. He falls to his knees in the petals, and then looks up to see a grand floating metropolis, confetti-colored in the darkness: the Land of the Dead.

The second and third acts of the movie are mostly set in this city of jubilant sugar-skull skeletons, where you exist only as long as you are remembered by the living. (You can cross over to the living world on the Day of the Dead, but only if your photo is on display.) Miguel joins up with a raggedy show-biz hustler named Héctor, who’s desperate to get his picture back up on an ofrenda , and who says he can bring Miguel to de la Cruz. Héctor lives in a waterfront shantytown filled with people who are about to be forgotten; at one point, he begs a guitar for Miguel off an ill-tempered cowboy named Chicharrón, who vanishes as soon as Héctor finishes singing an old dirty song.

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Eventually, Miguel realizes that Héctor is his real ancestor, and the movie sprints to a conclusion that’s as skillfully engineered to produce waterworks as the montage at the beginning of “Up.” But until the end, “Coco” is mostly, wonderfully, a mess of conflict and disappointment and sadness. Héctor seems to have failed everyone who takes a chance on him. Miguel’s face, painted in skeleton camouflage, often droops as if he were a sad little black-and-white dog. “Coco” is animated by sweetness, but this sweetness is subterranean, bursting through mostly in tiny details: the way that both Mamá Imelda and Miguel’s grandmother brandish shoes when they’re angry; or how the daffy Xolo dog that accompanies Miguel on his adventure is named Dante; or how the skeletons return to their city through the Day of the Dead’s efficient T.S.A. system, declaring the churros and beer that their families gave them for their journey home.

Before “Coco” hit theaters, it was easy to doubt that the movie would present Mexican culture as expansively and gorgeously as it does, with such natural familiarity and respect. It is Pixar’s nineteenth movie, but its first with a nonwhite protagonist; Lee Unkrich, the director and creator of the initial story, is white. The movie’s working title was “Día de los Muertos,” and, in 2013, Disney lawyers tried, absurdly, to trademark that phrase. But Unkrich and his team approached their subject with openness and collaborative humility: they travelled to Mexico, they loosened Pixar’s typical secrecy to build a large network of consultants, and, after the trademark controversy, they asked several prominent critics to come onboard. “Coco” is the first movie to have both an all-Latino cast and a nine-figure budget. It grossed more than eight hundred million dollars worldwide, won two Oscars, and became the biggest blockbuster in Mexican history.

“Coco” is also a definitive movie for this moment: an image of all the things that we aren’t, an exploration of values that feel increasingly difficult to practice in the actual world. It’s a story of a multigenerational matriarchy, rooted in the past—whereas real life, these days, feels like an atemporal, structureless nightmare ruled by men. It’s about lineage and continuity at a time when each morning makes me feel like my brain is being wiped and battered by new flashes of cruelty, as though history is being forgotten and only the worst parts rewritten. It feels like myth or science fiction to imagine that our great-great-grandchildren will remember us. If we continue to treat our resources the way we are treating them currently, those kids—if they exist at all—will live in a world that is ravaged, punishing, artificial, and hard.

This world is hard enough already: its technological conditions induce emotional alienation, and its economic ones narrow our attention to questions of individual survival. As it is, I haven’t assembled the ofrenda I ought to. I barely feel like I’m taking adequate care of the people I love right now, and I mean the ones I know personally. I feel certain that I’m failing the people I don’t know but that I love nonetheless—the people in our national community, and the people who are seeking to become a part of it.

“Coco” is a movie about borders more than anything—the beauty in their porousness, the absolute pain produced when a border locks you away from your family. The conflict in the story comes from not being able to cross over; the resolution is that love pulls you through to the other side. The thesis of the movie is that families belong together. I watched it again this week, reading the news that Donald Trump is considering building an unregulated holding camp for migrant children , that ICE showed up on the lawn of a legal permanent resident and initiated deportation procedures , that a four-month-old baby was torn away from her breast-feeding mother . If justice is what love looks like in public, then love has started to seem like the stuff of children’s movies, or maybe the stuff of this children’s movie—something that doesn’t make sense in the adult world, but should.

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Coco review – charmer that could bring Pixar back from the dead

A boy who wants to become a musician against the wishes of his family ends up in the Land of the Dead in this engaging, spectacular animation

B eing simultaneously life-affirming and death-obsessed is a tough act for any film to pull off, but Coco manages it. This might start bringing Pixar studios back from the dead. I’d feared the worst from this movie’s Mexican Day of the Dead trope, expecting a tiresome parade of sub-Halloweeny horror masks under a sombrero of cliches. Actually, it’s an engaging and touching quest narrative, with some great spectacle, sweet musical numbers and on-point stuff about the permeability of national borders.

Coco is conceived on classic lines, certainly, but has that rarest of things in movies of any sort – a real third act and an interesting ending. It has something to say about memory and mortality and how we think about the awfully big adventure waiting for us all, which finally incubated an unexpectedly stubborn lump in my throat. This film has a potency that Pixar hasn’t had for a while, and for suppressed tears, the last five minutes of Coco might come to be compared to the opening montage of Up .

Miguel, voiced Anthony Gonzalez, with his great-great-grandmother, Mamá Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguía) in Coco.

We find ourselves in Mexico, where a kid called Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) lives in a small town with his extended family, including his ancient great-grandmother Coco, who is poignantly on the verge of succumbing to dementia. Miguel dreams of being a musician such as the mega-celebrity singer Ernesto De La Cruz (voiced by Benjamin Bratt) who became a screen star and recording legend before being crushed to death by a falling bell in 1942. But, like Billy Elliot shoved into the boxing ring, Miguel is all set to join the family’s trade: making shoes.

The reason is that his folks have their own deeply internalised betrayal myth: Coco’s father was a vagabond musician who ran out on a young wife and infant daughter to chase his musical dreams. The family has sworn never to have anything to do with music and has even torn this man’s image from the family photograph: that vitally important image without which an ofrenda cannot be made for the Day of the Dead when the departed come back for a visit.

Miguel makes what he thinks is a sensational discovery: this disgraced ancestor was in fact the legendary lantern-jawed charmer Ernesto de la Cruz, and when a cosmic quirk of fate puts Miguel accidentally in the Land of the Dead, his mission is to make contact with De la Cruz and get his all-important blessing to return to the living world and pursue his musical destiny.

Of course, in the time-honoured style, Miguel needs a quirky/unreliable helpmeet for the journey and this is a deceased scallywag called Héctor (voiced by Gael García Bernal) whose body has a habit of collapsing and reforming with a xylophone clatter. As with all the comic wingmen in this kind of film, Héctor is a mix of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.

In the real world, the Day of the Dead, with its endlessly Instagrammable images, is danger of becoming the west’s condescending gap-year obsession. Coco – which can be compared to the Guillermo del Toro-produced movie The Book of Life – takes a particular line on this phenomenon: that it is an empowering, family-friendly folk myth that puts us in touch with our heritage.

Another way of thinking about it is that it’s a raucous, satirically challenging and deliberately transgressive tradition that glories in the physical intractability of death and thereby mocks the pretensions of powerful but all-too-mortal rulers: which is, incidentally, the tradition that Eisenstein responded to for his unrealised Mexico film Que Viva Mexico!

Well, that is not what Coco is about; it is more emollient. Perhaps like Orpheus with his lyre, Miguel’s way with a guitar will get him back to the world of life and the world of music, without which, of course, a living death is all he has to look forward to wherever he happens to be.

He, and we, absorb the news that the Land of the Dead is not the same as eternity. These vivified skeletons beyond the grave exist there only as long as someone back on Earth remembers them, which is why the photo piety of the domestic shrine is so important. It is a gigantic Valhalla of private and public celebrity. Oblivion means death and De la Cruz’s most famous song was called Remember Me. This is a charming and very memorable film.

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Coco Review

19 Jan 2018

After Inside Out , Pixar dips again into the metaphysical with a trip into the afterlife. Of course, being Pixar, it doesn’t simply slip beyond a veil but stride across a gigantic arched bridge made of marigolds, because there’s no concept so difficult that Pixar can’t make it breathtaking. Powell and Pressburger would cheer.

While this film packs in adventure and desperately colourful characters, it’s ultimately a moving story about family connections and the complicated ways we love one another. Coco is also one of the most impressively animated films ever. There are sequences in the 'real' world where the attention to detail creates such a life-like environment that it’s almost jarring to see an animated boy running along what appears to be an actual, fluorescent-lit Mexican street. From the glow of candles to the magic shine of

a huge, otherworldly city hanging in the air to the ugliest cute dog ever put on film, every design element here is spectacular, and the sheer beauty holds the attention even during the film’s more familiar chase sequences.

One of the most impressively animated films ever.

Our hero is a young boy called Miguel (Rodriguez — a real talent) who longs to sing and play guitar just like his movie-star hero, Ernesto De La Cruz (Bratt). But there’s a problem — generations before, his great-great-grandmother’s heart was broken when her musician husband abandoned her, and since then she has forbidden the entire family from enjoying or playing music. Miguel can’t bear the restriction, but when he steals a guitar from his idol’s tomb, he finds himself transported to the Land Of The Dead. And while the skeletons that surround him there are remarkably friendly, they’re still skeletons. Miguel discovers he is unable to get home unless he finds a (deceased) member of his family to give him a blessing — he then teams up with deadbeat dead man Hector (Bernal) to find his missing ancestor and get home.

There’s a fair amount of expositionary heavy-lifting to establish the rules of the Land Of The Dead and the Dia De Muertos when the deceased can visit the living, but once that’s done the film races towards an immensely touching finale via a series of spectacular musical numbers courtesy of Frozen ’s Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. The commitment to Mexican culture is absolute — with Pixar good-luck charm John Ratzenberger the only non-Mexican voice in the film. Local foods and traditions such as alebrijes (folk-art sculptures of fantastical creatures) are everywhere — and that representation is not just a moral good, but makes for more original storytelling. What’s more, the themes about creativity, love and family are universal. Our appealing hero ultimately has to find peace in the land of the living with the help of the dead, and the way he does so will squeeze a tear from all but the hardest heart.

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REVIEW: Pixar's new movie 'Coco' is a fantastic family-friendly feast for the eyes and the heart

"Coco" is a heartwarming movie that lives up to Pixar’s nearly flawless reputation.
The story follows the young Miguel as he pursues his dream of playing music.
The stunning exploration of Mexico's Dia de los Muertos traditions is well-executed.
If you've enjoyed Disney's latest movies, definitely go see "Coco."
Warning: Minor spoilers ahead for Pixar's "Coco."

Disney's new movie "Coco" is equal parts magic, family fun, and the deep emotional education fans have come to expect from a Pixar film. The movie follows the young Miguel, an aspiring musician forced to hide his love of playing guitar due to a deep-rooted family "curse."

Miguel confronts Abuelita's determination to stifle his musical dreams and accidentally enters the Land of the Dead on the evening of Dia de los Muertos. Miguel is then in a race against the clock as his journey among the dead leads to him uncovering the secrets of his family's history.

What's hot:

"Coco" deftly handles the terrain of Dia de los Muertos by using convincing character exposition to reach any viewer unfamiliar with the Mexican holiday and its traditions. As Miguel comes to understand the deeper meaning of celebrating his ancestors, "Coco" explores death, the afterlife, and the concept that those we've loved and lost aren't truly gone until we stop remembering them.

As fans and critics alike have come to expect from a Pixar movie, the animation and world-building in "Coco" is breathtaking. From the opening sequence's vibrant use of papel picados to the illustrious Land of the Dead, the colors and textures featured throughout the movie will leave you in awe.

The music is also spectacularly crafted, with one song in particular, "Remember Me," cleverly transcending its initial romantic implications into a tear-jerking ode to family. Other musical numbers will leave you grinning and full of the warmth only a Disney song can provide.

"Coco" is also being praised for its authentic representation of Mexican and Latino culture without becoming derivative or engaging with stereotypes in a disingenuous way.

"Pixar looking to exalt the colorful folklore of Mexico in all its splendor and it succeeds," Vanguardia reviewer Carlos Diaz Reyes wrote . " The homage is up to the task and is so beautiful that one can not help but feel a certain pride."

What's Not:

At times, the plot required the suspension of disbelief just a smidge too much, especially when it came to a couple mysteries that many adult viewers will likely connect the dots on long before the characters get there on screen.

There are also a few underdeveloped characters and subplots that start weighing down the pace of the move about two-thirds of the way in, but the ending brings everything together in a way that will likely cause you to forget any qualms you had with the finer details.

But despite its predictability at points, the ending will leave you in a weepy state worth of Pixar's reputation.

The Bottom Line:

"Coco" is a spectacular family-friendly feast for the eyes and the heart. While it doesn't quite reach the peaks of entertainment recent Disney animated hits like "Moana" and "Zootopia" have hit, "Coco" is a worthy addition to the Pixar catalogue. And of course, it should leave you feel weepy at least once, as per Pixar standards.

Grade: A-

"Coco" arrives in theaters on Wednesday. Watch the final trailer below (though note that the modern pop music used to advertise "Coco" to US audiences is at odds with the actual music in the movie):

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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Animation , Comedy , Drama , Kids

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In Theaters

November 22, 2017
Voices of Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel; Gael García Bernal as Héctor; Benjamin Bratt as Ernesto de la Cruz; Alanna Ubach as Mamá Imelda; Renee Victor as Abuelita; Jaime Camil as Papá; Alfonso Arau as Papá Julio; Ana Ofelia Murguía as Mamá Coco

Home Release Date

February 27, 2018
Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina

Distributor

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Movie Review

Little Miguel loves music. His family? Not so much. Or rather, not at all .

You see, Miguel’s hardworking family has a long, proud tradition of crafting fine shoes. Miguel will one day join the family business, they presume. But playing music? His family is having none of that.

Four generations ago, his still-despised great, great grandfather abandoned his family to pursue a career in music. He never returned. Generations passed, but the music man’s betrayal was never forgotten … or forgiven. Since then, no one in the family has been allowed to do anything even remotely musical, lest the tragic pattern repeat itself.

Miguel understands why his family bans music in every form. But he loves it anyway.

Miguel secretly plays a homemade guitar in his attic. In fact, he’s erected a shrine of sorts to Mexico’s most famous singer: Ernesto de la Cruz. And little Miguel harbors hopes of becoming a real musician himself one day, no matter what his family might say.

But first, there’s the Día de los Muertos to celebrate, the annual Day of the Dead. In this indigenous Mexican religious tradition, the living honor the dead at cemeteries one special day each year, bringing pictures and offering food and gifts to deceased ancestors, who are believed to be present in spirit. Ancestors who don’t have a relative remembering them? Well, they eventually turn to ash in the colorful afterlife known as the Land of the Dead.

The Day of the Dead celebrations include a local music contest. Miguel hopes to compete—secretly, of course. But before the Day of the Dead arrives, his grandmother catches him practicing and angrily smashes the little guy’s beloved instrument.

Crestfallen and desperate, Miguel hatches a risky plan: Taking Ernesto de la Cruz’s famous guitar from the musician’s crypt. But as Miguel discovers, the Day of the Dead is a time to give back to those who’ve passed on, not to take things from them .

The consequence of his rash decision? Being transported to the Land of the Dead himself. It’s a vibrant, beautiful place in many ways. Still, one doesn’t want to end up in the Land of the Dead if one is in fact not yet dead. But if Miguel hopes to return to the land of the living, it will involve reconnecting with his deceased relatives there … and tracking down Ernesto de la Cruz himself.

Positive Elements

Coco focuses on two intertwined themes: the importance of family and the power of music.

We repeatedly hear variants on the idea, “Nothing is more important than family.” Near the end of the film, one of Miguel’s deceased ancestors tells him, “Never forget how much your family loves you.” The film delivers the unmistakable message that cherishing our family here and remembering those who have passed on are both important.

Music is also shown to be a positive, life-giving force, even though Miguel’s family is initially suspicious of it. By the time the credits role, however, most of them embrace a new appreciation for how the songs we pass on from generation to generation have special meaning.

Miguel meets a character in the Land of the Dead named Hector who helps him in his quest to reach Ernesto. Hector, and at times Miguel’s family, all make sacrifices to deliver the boy back to terra firma.

The film also delivers what is perhaps Disney’s core philosophical message: “Follow your heart, seize your moment.” As Plugged In has talked about repeatedly over the years, in some ways this message of encouragement to chase our dreams is a positive one. Pursued to extremes, however, it can devolve into something dangerously narcissistic, too, a theme I’ll return to in Other Negative Elements.

Spiritual Elements

Mexico’s Day of the Dead—an indigenous belief system, the film tells us in the credits—plays a central role in everything that happens in Coco . (And though that holiday has historically had links to Catholicism in Mexico, there’s hardly anything here that deals with that connection.) The story walks us through a fairly intricate theological understanding of what happens after we die, so much so that one of my fellow Plugged In reviewers likened it to a “Sunday school” lesson about this belief system.

In a nutshell, we learn that those who die pass on to a wondrously beautiful afterlife that—apart from its residents being mostly just skeletal—is a lot like this world. They go to concerts. They drink, laugh, play, spend time with other deceased relatives and friends.

One day a year, however, some of them have a chance to walk across a bridge of leaves to revisit the land of the living, though only as ghosts who are invisible to those who are still alive. They’re only granted that access, however, if someone still has a photograph of them and is displaying it. No photo on display, no “passport” back for a day. At the deceased’s grave sites, relatives leave offerings for their ancestors. “Things they loved in life,” one person says.

But there’s another, deeper and more unsettling layer to these beliefs as well. Once no one alive remembers you any more, you fade into dust. Annihilation, it would seem. “The final death,” one character calls it. (Indeed, we see that fate played out in one pitiable minor character’s life.)

Miguel’s decision to steal Ernesto’s guitar ushers him magically into the Land of the Dead. In order to get back to the land of the living, Miguel must obtain the blessing of one of his relatives there—many of whom he soon meets. This seems as if it should be pretty straightforward, but various plot twists make earning that blessing more difficult than expected. And if he can’t get back by sunrise the next day, he’ll be trapped in the Land of the Dead forever. (As the clock ticks down, Miguel’s hands slowly begin to turn to bone, like the other deceased residents there.)

Magical creatures known as “spirit guides” can be found in the Land of the Dead as well. They can take many forms, large and small, several of which we see in the film.

Miguel’s grandmother describes her contempt for music in spiritual terms, saying of her own grandfather’s abandonment of the family, “That man’s music was a curse.” Miguel tells someone, “I just want to get de la Cruz’s blessing. I want to prove that I’m worthy of it. Ernesto tells a woman, “You must have faith, sister.”

A couple of times, we see crosses—including quite a few gravestones featuring them in a cemetery. But other than those occasional glimpses at that Christian symbol, there’s nothing in the film’s spiritual worldview that has anything to do with Christianity

Sexual Content

Ernesto is portrayed almost as a Mexican Elvis. Not only was a he a famous singer, but he was an actor as well. Miguel watches movies of him, one of which includes a romantic scene of him kissing a woman.

In the Land of the Dead, Miguel stumbles upon a man painting a completely unclothed female skeleton, a scene that’s obviously intended to suggest a man painting a nude.

Violent Content

In a flashback early in the film, we learn that Ernesto was tragically killed while performing when a giant bell fell on him (a scene that’s played with dark humor).

Once Miguel is transported to the Land of the Dead, he discovers that its skeleton-like residents have bodies with many seemingly detachable parts, such as heads, jawbones, eyeballs, etc.

On a more serious note, we (and Miguel and Hector) watch as a man who’s been forgotten turns to dust and blows away—one of the most poignant and quietly disturbing scenes in the film.

A woman hits a man repeatedly. Someone is tossed in a deep well, and another character falls from a great height. Slapstick violence fills frantic chase scenes. Miguel falls in a swimming pool and is rescued by Ernesto. Someone who wants Miguel to stick around in the land of the dead tells him, “I hope you die very soon.” We hear a story about someone being poisoned.

Crude or Profane Language

Mild interjections and name-calling include “shoot,” “heck,” “stupid,” and “you rat.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

In the Land of the Dead, many people celebrate with what appear to be alcohol-like drinks.

A man in the land of the dead who is on the verge of being forgotten drinks from a bottle. We also glimpse a close-up of a shot glass.

Other Negative Elements

There’s a visual gag about “sporty underwear for wrestlers.” Miguel breaks into a crypt and steals Ernesto’s guitar. Hector manipulates Miguel with a lie. Many, if not most, of Miguel’s relatives—both living and dead—harbor an outsized fear of music that causes them to treat Miguel cruelly at times.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Ernesto, for his part, is increasingly shown to be someone who’s taken his desire to make music too far. Though he says it means everything to him, we also see how that passionate focus on music has repeatedly caused him to treat those close to him quite shabbily indeed.

Coco left me feeling conflicted. It’s a typical Pixar movie in many respects: vivid, imaginative, rollicking, winsome and tender. And the filmmakers never waver in their focus on the importance of family.

But is it possible to focus on the family … too much ? And the surprising answer here is, I think, yes .

Coco unpacks a theological system with Aztec roots that arguably steps over the line from honoring the family to worshiping it. The living bring gifts for the dead. The dead quietly return to briefly see the living for one special day.

The presentation of this belief system is no doubt touching and beautifully rendered. But the beliefs we see earnestly depicted here nevertheless remain at loggerheads with orthodox Christian teaching in a long list of significant ways. There’s no sense of judgment or accountability for anyone’s sinful choices, as evidenced by the fact that some of those who “enjoy” the best afterlife in the Land of the Dead have perpetrated horrible things in the land of the living. And eventually, most folks fade into nothing when they’re forgotten by the living—a grim, hopeless prospect indeed. Finally, Coco never grapples at all with the question of God’s connection to this realm of the dead, either.

So despite this film’s eye-popping beauty and its heartwarming moments, Pixar’s latest still packages a pagan worldview that’s in sharp conflict with Christian beliefs. That’s an issue that should prompt parents to pause and consider how best to deal with it if you’ve been planning on packing up the family and heading off to multiplex to see Coco .

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Review: Pixar’s ‘Coco’ sings a high-spirited but sometimes faltering tune

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Can a person honor his family and pursue his dreams? That is the question at the heart of “Coco,” a whimsical and high-spirited romp through the underworld from Pixar Animation Studios. The story’s 12-year-old protagonist, Miguel Rivera, is an aspiring guitarist with a song in his heart and stardom on his mind. But to realize his destiny he must defy the wishes of his close-knit Mexican family, which, for reasons stemming from a long-ago ancestral scandal, has forbidden him from enjoying or pursuing music.

No such ban will be placed on the audience for “Coco,” which bounces along to the beat of a Michael Giacchino score, several traditional Mexican songs and a few original tunes that never run the risk of burrowing into your mind. (The most significant one, ironically, is titled “Remember Me.”) But while the movie revels in its music and duly rebukes the Riveras for trying to stifle young Miguel’s destiny, it also comes down firmly on the side of family, taking pains to acknowledge the importance of staying true to one’s roots.

It does this, in part, by upholding its own formidable creative and corporate lineage. Directed by Lee Unkrich with some of the warmth and imagination he brought to “Toy Story 3” (and co-directed by Adrian Molina, who wrote the script with Matthew Aldrich), “Coco” is the first of Pixar’s 19 features to feature a non-white human protagonist, diversifying a company slate that has already proven a model of inclusivity with regard to talking fish, sentient toys and anthropomorphic cars.

Try as you might to lose yourself in “Coco,” or pause to ponder its metaphysics, too often you find yourself hindered by the movie’s breathless velocity.

But beyond the novelty of having animated characters eat tamales and drop the occasional word of Spanish, the movie betrays an instinctive kinship with the Disney brand that is by turns pleasing and thoroughly unsurprising. It is an alternately smooth and strenuous Pixarian weave of bright colors, spirited chatter and inventive action, prepared and tested in accordance with the highest factory standards.

After an inspired prologue designed entirely in the intricate papel picado style of tissue-paper art, the story begins on Día de los Muertos, the holiday when Mexican families display their late ancestors’ photographs alongside food offerings on a commemorative altar. But while young Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) loves his family — especially his adorably wizened great-grandmother, Mamá Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguía) — he is less excited by the upcoming festivities than by the prospect of performing in a local talent show.

That doesn’t sit well with the music-loathing Riveras, especially Miguel’s domineering grandmother (Renee Victor), an overly broad caricature who does her part to set the plot in motion by smashing the boy’s guitar like a piñata. In a more satisfying version of “Coco,” the Riveras’ fiesta might have quickly gone the way of Carrie’s prom. But Miguel, a good boy at heart, simply finds a new guitar in the nearby tomb of his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), a legendary musician and movie star in the Pedro Infante mold.

Robbing a crypt on this day of all days, alas, is a serious no-no, and with one strum of Ernesto’s guitar, Miguel finds himself transported to the Land of the Dead, where the deceased — walking, talking skeletons with a sheen of orange ectoplasm — are preparing to visit their families on the other side. And so “Coco” begins its extended journey across a gorgeous pink-and-purple-daubed vision of Hades, with Miguel basically playing Orpheus in a red hoodie. (He even has a canine sidekick named Dante.)

If that sounds pretty dark for a movie with a PG rating (awarded for that horror of horrors, “thematic elements”), the script’s ghoulish touches and mordant flashes of wit turn out to be its most disarming qualities. Kids may squirm in delight when Miguel realizes he’s turning into a skeleton, one phalange at a time, and will soon be dead himself unless he finds his way back to the land of the living by morning. To do this, he must secure a blessing from his ancestors — a tricky proposition, as none of them is willing to let him return home unless he agrees to their music moratorium.

In perhaps the story’s most poignant conceit, death turns out to be simply another circle of life where the deceased can remain and thrive so long as they are remembered by a living, breathing loved one. That raises the stakes a bit when Miguel meets a street-smart skeleton named Héctor (Gael García Bernal) who is desperate to ensure that his mortal legacy is not erased. Their partnership complicates a busy plot already thick with chases, coincidences, ancient secrets, mistaken identities and Frida Kahlo sightings, and it plows through each twist like a roller coaster navigating a new loop.

Which is only fitting, since the movie’s underworld suggests nothing so much as a giant theme park, complete with turnstiles, bustling streets and gaudy attractions (none more brilliant than the alebrijes , fantastical winged animals come to life). There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The best theme parks, Disney’s included, are worth getting lost in. But try as you might to lose yourself in “Coco,” or at least pause long enough to ponder its metaphysics, too often you might find yourself hindered by the movie’s breathless velocity.

And also by the increasing monotony of its character design. The visuals have the telltale Pixar richness; you sense a hundred different creative choices went into the animation of a simple confetti shower. But like earlier movies, including “Corpse Bride” and the similarly Día de los Muertos-themed “The Book of Life,” “Coco” offers a reminder that skeletons, for all their googly eyes and gorgeous bone structure, are not the most emotionally expressive creatures. With the exception of his great-great-grandmother, Mamá Imelda (a spirited Alanna Ubach), Miguel’s dead relatives are a pretty indistinguishable and — sorry — lifeless bunch.

The action beats arrive right on cue, followed in due course by a showstopping musical climax and an ending all but guaranteed to tickle your tear ducts. The question proposed at the outset — can a person honor his family and pursue his dreams? — is answered with the kind of skill and ingenuity that leaves you strongly suspecting it was bogus to begin with.

None of which makes “Coco” a bad movie, only one whose flights of imaginative frenzy are too constrained by formula, in the end, for it to count as a great one. In the best Pixar movies, “Wall-E,” “Inside Out” and “Toy Story 3” among them, you get the sense of filmmakers boldly and brilliantly conquering new terrain. “Coco,” by contrast, feels governed by more timid, responsible spirits. Its goal is to reassure, to provoke no offense and to give an underserved culture the sentimental, uplifting Hollywood cash cow it deserves. Progress could certainly look worse.

------------

Rating: PG, for thematic elements

Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes

Playing: In general release

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The trailer for “Coco” from Disney Pixar.

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'coco' review: a colorful contemplation of death, family, and legacy.

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The ancient, lovable Coco with young Miguel.

Pixar is back - the bold, creative Coco washes away the bland taste of The Good Dinosaur and Cars 3 . While not quite as clever as Inside Out or Wall-E , Coco manages to tell a family-friendly story centered entirely around death, one that reflects on the legacy we leave behind.

But before I sing the film’s praises, I need to rant about the short at the beginning. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Pixar always plays a cute little short before their films, which are always supremely innovative, and sometimes even better than the feature. Well, Coco is preceded by a soulless Frozen spin-off centered around Olaf the irritating snowman. It’s twenty-one minutes long (I felt every second of it), and has, like, fifteen musical numbers, all instantly forgettable.

Even my son, who is a big Frozen fan, kept asking if Coco was actually going to play or if we’d just walked into Frozen 2 by accident. It’s time to let it go Disney (see what I did there?) - even the kids are getting annoyed by Frozen oversaturation.

Anyway, once you make it past the Olaf ordeal, Coco proves to be a pleasant surprise - an emotional, philosophical story of life and death, that despite the gorgeous visuals, doesn’t sugar-coat anything.

Right away, both the importance and the potential danger of respecting one’s heritage is highlighted, and proves to be a poignant theme. Our young protagonist Miguel yearns to play the guitar, but his artistic urges are severely repressed by his family, who hold a bitter grudge against all musicians, passed down through the generations.

The titular Coco is Miguel’s great-grandmother, a beautifully rendered, impossibly ancient creature clinging on to her last days of life, and the scattered remains of her memories. Her father abandoned her to pursue a musical career, and to this day, the family has not forgotten the betrayal.

On Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead, Miguel seizes an opportunity to steal a guitar from a deceased ancestor, and is instantly plunged into the afterlife, where he must receive a blessing from said ancestor to return home, and follow his musical passion.

As Miguel traverses the afterlife, he realizes the importance of leaving a legacy behind, for to be forgotten by the living imposes another death sentence, and nobody knows if there is a second afterlife beyond the first.

It’s pretty heavy stuff. But there isn’t any hint of gothic gloom surrounding this afterlife; it’s a cheerful, misshapen shantytown populated by decorated skeletons, and luridly colored alebrijes, the creatures that guide the souls of the deceased.

The first sight of the overpopulated afterlife is jaw-dropping, but during the second act, the film slows somewhat. Funnily enough, the skeletons aren’t as interesting to look at as Miguel’s fleshy family, and the masses of bones and fairy lights start to fade into the background.

It’s at this point that I noticed the younger children in the theatre were growing bored. Pixar always includes plenty of details for the adults to enjoy (thankfully), and Coco definitely leans toward older viewers, more than usual. Children younger than six might find it difficult to relate to the majority of Coco , and the fact that there isn’t an excess of humor doesn’t help keep the little ones in their seats. But things pick up again toward the end, and the finale is another bittersweet, Pixar patented tear-jerker.

Younger children might not be quite as entertained as you, but Coco is the best children’s animation I’ve seen since Kubo and the Two Strings . For a child struggling to understand the death of a grandparent, or even a beloved pet, this film offers an in-depth introspection on what it means to live a full life, and how memories can keep the deceased from disappearing entirely.

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Coco Review

The latest animated wonder from Pixar, Coco, is a poignant story of family and a rich homage to Mexican culture.

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Coco is a delight from start to finish, and a welcome return to form for Pixar, as this is probably the animation studio’s best outing since 2015’s Inside Out . Whereas the intervening The Good Dinosaur was muddled from conception, and Finding Dory and Cars 3 played like efficient enough corporate obligations, Coco feels fresh and inspired thanks to a poignant story, a lovely immersion in Mexican culture, and a handful of rousing musical numbers (it also tells a quite different tale, although with similar elements, than 2014’s Guillermo del Toro-produced Book of Life ).

The film is set on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in the fictional Mexican village of Santa Cecilia, where 12-year-old Miguel Riviera (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of being a musician like the famous Ernesto de la Cruz, a local legend who became a popular singer and film star before his accidental death a century earlier. But Miguel’s ambitions are banned by his brood, since his own great-great-grandfather–whose identity is a mystery–left the family behind to pursue his musical goals while his late great-great-grandmother Imelda (Alanna Ubach) struggled to turn the family into successful if unremarkable shoemakers.

Desperate to perform in a town talent contest after his grandmother smashes his own guitar, Miguel defies his elders by breaking into De la Cruz’s mausoleum to “borrow” the dead man’s guitar. But touching it sends Miguel to the Land of the Dead, where he must find a way to return before sunrise or else he’ll stay there permanently. Luckily he’ll have a little help from Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal), a spirit who will be forgotten entirely if Miguel cannot bring his photo back to the land of the living, in navigating a colorful great beyond.

The story from there takes several twists and turns that we won’t get into here, and while some of the narrative’s beats are familiar from past Pixar outings, they’re delivered with passion and heart by co-directors Lee Unkrich ( Toy Story 3 ) and Adrian Molina, who also penned the screenplay together. Themes of love, family, and friendship are familiar items from the Pixar oeuvre, but are delivered here in a less ham-handed way than some of the company’s more recent efforts. Coco is character-driven in the best possible way, and all of its major characters are given layers of complexity that you’d be hard-pressed to find in a lot of live-action films.

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After the reliable but still rather unmemorable visual palettes of the last few films, Coco outdoes itself in that department as well with the amazing world-building of the Land of the Dead. Eye-poppingly designed as a multi-level city ablaze with color and a glow of spiritual essence, the Land of the Dead is slightly anachronistic in some ways but positioned intriguingly as a sort of alternate dimension–where the deceased continue to lead full “lives,” as it were, but where a strange fatalism permeates the surroundings. The skeletal beings (influenced by Mexican folk art) who inhabit this realm are both funny and subtly eerie, and one sequence detailing the fate of one lonely soul who is no longer remembered by anyone in the land of the living is both chilling and tremendously sad.

Let’s not get too morbid, however; this isn’t an arthouse rumination on the nature of death–although those darker concerns are woven into the fabric of the story–but a Pixar adventure full of humor and soul and profound themes. The lessons involving families and our memories of them are moving and tear-inducing, if not quite as emotionally devastating as those found in Inside Out or other earlier Pixar classics. The movie also dives deep into Mexican culture and family life, representing both in a way that it would be a joy to see more of, especially during a dark period in which that country has seen itself demonized and scapegoated. But Coco is not heavy-handed at all this regard, preferring to let the story and setting do the talking (it also takes a gentle but incisive swipe at celebrity culture and our addiction to fame–but again, not in a blunt force way).

Will Coco end up near or even among the vaunted company of such all-time Pixar classics like Toy Story , The Incredibles , WALL-E or Ratatouille ? It’s hard to say this early, and it could be easy to overrate the movie after the tough couple of years the studio has slogged through. At last, here is a Pixar movie that gives us something that doesn’t feel like it was conceived in a boardroom full of suits instead of the minds, hearts, and creative toolkits of the studio’s artists and filmmakers. While Coco is quick to point out that making shoes is just as honorable as making music, one can tell that music was a bit more important this time out.

Coco is out in theaters this Wednesday (Nov. 22).

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

‘Coco’ Review: A Sweet Family Tale That Joins the Ranks of Pixar’s Best

Pixar’s latest charts a beautiful, emotional journey through the generations of a Mexican family.

Some of Pixar’s finest animations honor the frequented storytelling tradition of generational gap : a young underdog stands his/her ground against an unsympathetic family and comes of age. From Finding Nemo to La Luna and Brave , several films from the studio’s distinguished catalog pull relatable emotional heartstrings with tales of adolescent small-timers struggling to assert their voices and prove their worth to their elders. Lee Unkrich , the director responsible for my favorite Pixar film ( Toy Story 3 ), brings this beloved convention to life in the vivid and thoroughly entertaining Coco . With an original story by Unkrich, Jason Katz, Matthew Aldrich and Adrian Molina (and a script penned by Aldrich and Molina), the big-hearted Coco joins the high ranks of Pixar’s best in telling the spirited tale of a resilient Mexican child’s poignant journey through family roots. As one would expect from an accomplished Pixar film, Coco will capture your heart and bring you to tears with an unforeseen twist in the end, despite its slightly overwritten final act.

We follow the young, energetic pre-teen Miguel Rivera (Anthony Gonzales), who lives in the village of Santa Cecilia and dreams of becoming a musician in the footsteps of his legendary idol Ernesto de la Cruz ( Benjamin Bratt ). But, in the words of the young Miguel, he is unfortunately cursed by a long-standing family principle that forbids music; a rule embraced by his ancestors after Miguel’s musician great-great-grandfather had abandoned his wife and daughter in search of fame and fortune. Since then, the family, led by a strong-willed great-great-grandmother, had built a successful shoe-making business (as efficiently told in Coco ’s compact opening that summarizes this back-story.) But Miguel’s heart doesn’t belong to the craft of shoemaking. Hidden from his disapproving family, he secretly practices his music and finally gets the chance to display his talents on Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, at a local talent contest.

But instead of the stage, he accidentally finds himself in the luridly designed Land of the Dead, where the deceased prepare to cross a bridge and visit their living family members, who commemorate them with wall-mounted photos during this annual celebration. Needing a deceased family member’s blessing to return to the world of the living, Miguel joins forces with an outcast: the frantic Hector ( Gael Garcia Bernal ) who has a quest of his own. Often mocked by his fellow skeletons for his desperate attempts to cross the bridge (despite having no family members that remember him), Hector agrees to guide Miguel in exchange of sending his photo to the other side.

In charting the joint mission of Miguel and Hector, Coco offers up a number of genuine shocks and surprises that are better preserved than revealed in reviews. The story, which celebrates familial love and steadily grows in complexity (sometimes, to a fault), takes the dazzled viewer through the wild alleys and corners of the Land of the Dead, realized with countless tasteful, intricate details. I can’t accurately speak to the cultural authenticity of Coco ’s visuals (though a clue to their appropriateness is surely the film’s record-breaking box office success in Mexico), but I can certainly speak to its mesmerizing aesthetic, brought to life by production designer Harley Jessup. Easily among the most visually complex productions the studio has ever taken on (along with Wall-E and Inside Out ), Coco tastefully renders echoes of live-action wonders like The Fifth Element , Minority Report, and Moulin Rouge . Within regards to its slightly over-plotted story, don’t be surprised if you end up thinking about Back to the Future Parts I & II frequently. After all, this is a film about reckoning with family history, in which Miguel’s pursuit of Hector’s photo gives Marty McFly’s chase of the Sports Almanac a run for its money.

Consistently delightful, Coco dares to pull the rug from under the young viewers a number of times. To that end, it’s thankfully among the works of Pixar that don’t talk down to children. Instead, Unkrich refreshingly trusts their emotional intelligence and perhaps indirectly advances their maturity as a result. Filled with sincere life lessons (some of them, openly catered towards adults), Coco doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to putting a few scares on the screen. While it could have been leaner, it still belongs to Pixar’s elite class with a sweet, sophisticated family tale that knocks down imaginary walls between generations (and cultures) with dignity.

Movie Review: Coco (2017)

Howard Schumann
Movie Reviews
No responses
--> January 18, 2018

“Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” — Buddha

Directed by Lee Unkrich (“ Toy Story 3 ”) and Adrian Molina, Coco , the latest animated film from Disney-Pixar tells us to follow our dreams, seize the moment, and regard our family as paramount. These ideals can often be mutually exclusive, however, as 12-year-old Miguel Rivera (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) discovers. Miguel, who lives in the village of Santa Cecilia in Mexico, wants nothing else than to be a musician but his father (voiced by Jaime Camil, “Jane the Virgin” TV series) tells him that his family is one of shoemakers and that he must follow the tradition.

The family’s antagonism toward music began years earlier when the husband of Miguel’s great-great grandmother Imelda (voiced by Alanna Ubach, “Helen Keller vs. Nightwolves”) left the family to pursue his music career, a decision for which he has never been forgiven. Coco is set during the Mexican holiday known as Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a celebration in which families pay respect to their deceased ancestors. In Miguel’s home, pictures of three generations of ancestors are placed on a ritual altar known as the ofrenda, though the top photograph is torn where the musician ancestor would have been.

Miguel’s idol is the singer Ernesto de la Cruz (voiced by Benjamin Bratt, “ The Infiltrator ”) whose song, “Remember Me,” when played by Miguel to his aged great-grandmother Mama Coco (voiced by Ana Ofelia Murguía, “The Last Call”), is a poignant reminder of everyone’s wish to be remembered. After Miguel’s domineering grandmother Abuelita Elena (voiced by Renée Victor, “ Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones ”) follows Miguel into the plaza and smashes the guitar he planned to use in the local talent competition, the boy enters Cruz’s tomb to “borrow” his guitar. This action, however, upsets the “space-time continuum” and he is unceremoniously transported to the Land of the Dead together with his faithful dog Dante.

Miguel knows that he is no longer in Kansas when he sees skeletal-like figures with colorful skulls existing in a strangely elaborate and visually diverse landscape. Though the dead can cross over to the other side via a bridge of marigolds, the spirits continue to exist only through the continuing memories of their loved ones in the world of the living. Once they are forgotten, they die a second death and disappear. Seeking clues to his family’s past, Miguel must obtain permission from someone in his family to return home before sunrise.

He meets several generations of ancestors, but they refuse to give him the blessing he needs to return unless he gives up music, something he refuses to do. Instead, Miguel vows to find and seek the blessing of de la Cruz whom he believes is the missing relative from the photograph. Fortunately, he receives assistance from Héctor (voiced by Gael García Bernal, “ Salt and Fire ”), a drifter who wants Miguel to take his photograph to his relatives in the land of the living so that he will not be forgotten. Their strange relationship opens a path for Miguel to see the world in a different light.

Coco is a heartwarming and beautifully animated story about a young person’s passion for music and his struggle to confront and overcome his family’s resistance to his dream. It is a juggling act. Miguel must learn to value his self worth and the courage to be true to himself while maintaining loyalty to the family he loves. He must also discover that no one ever really dies as long as their memories remain in the hearts of those who love them. And while the plot can become convoluted, the film is not really about the narrative but about the joy of self expression and, when we hear Miguel singing “Un Poco Loco” with the bone rattling Héctor, it is a moment of rare exuberance.

Tagged: children , love , magic , Mexico , musician

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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Pixar's 'Coco' is more than just another inspirational fantasy

What should a person be willing to sacrifice to achieve their dreams?

The easy answer is "everything," and film after film, aimed at both children and adults, has been based on that premise.

Pixar's Coco , though, takes on the bigger challenge of reckoning with the cost, and wondering where the limit lies.

The film opens with a prologue detailing a great tragedy buried in a family's past: Once upon a time, a musician abandoned his family to chase fame and fortune. His wife turned to shoemaking to support herself and her daughter – and banned music from the house forever, in bitter remembrance of her husband.

Generations later, the Rivera clan still makes their trade in shoes, and still strictly forbids any and all music. The neglected daughter is now an old woman, the great grandmother to a young boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), who's apparently inherited her father's passion for song. He practices his guitar in secret, quietly mouthing along to old tapes of his idol, the late Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt).

Right off the bat, it's clear something doesn't quite line up. De la Cruz's motto is "seize your moment," which sounds uplifting enough. However, the more Miguel takes those words to heart, the likelier it looks that he'll follow in his great-great grandfather's footsteps and leave his devastated family behind – whether or not he intends to.

You see, following de la Cruz's advice inadvertently leads Miguel into the Land of the Dead, where he encounters late relatives, befriends a sad-sack skeleton named Hector (Gael García Bernal, endlessly lovable), and pursues de la Cruz, whom he believes will be able to give him the blessing he needs to return to the land of the living. That last bit is rather urgent, because if Miguel is unable to find his way back by sunup, he's fated to stay in the Land of the Dead forever.

Pixar outdoes itself in the afterlife, which looks like a towering confection made of light. It falls right in line with the level of quality we've come to expect from the animation studio, but also like nothing else we've ever seen from them before. The land is awash in warm, inviting colors, and populated with expressively dressed skeletons and glowing neon alebrijes – fantastical spirit guides that can take the form of anything from a tiny monkey to an enormous flying cat.

But Coco never gets so carried away with spectacle that it loses sight of its hero's emotional journey. As Miguel delves deeper into the Land of the Dead, and gets better acquainted with all the people there, he also comes to learn what it really means to sacrifice everything in pursuit of a dream. He sees that he won't be the only one paying the cost, and comes face-to-face with the people who were left behind.

He learns that dreams are worth fighting for, but also that there are worse fates than surrendering that fight; that it matters who remembers you when you're gone, and why they remember you, and how.

It may not be especially unusual for a kid-friendly film to center around a young protagonist whose family just doesn't understand. It was only a year ago that Moana was singing about how far she'd go. What makes Coco rare is that it recognizes that the things that give your life meaning might be in opposition to one another, and asks you to consider what really matters most.

Topics Pixar

Angie Han is the Deputy Entertainment Editor at Mashable. Previously, she was the managing editor of Slashfilm.com. She writes about all things pop culture, but mostly movies, which is too bad since she has terrible taste in movies.

Why Watching Coco Is The Reason I Started To Embrace My Latina Culture

Let's talk about Coco.

For those who know me – and for those who don't – I didn't always embrace my culture.

Now, as a young twenty-something with nothing to lose and all the pride in her heart, I adore being Latina. I've learned where I've come from time and time again, and I've celebrated it with my father's side – the Latino side – pretty consistently. I've embraced the best Latino movies, as well as the best Latino TV shows, and will always tell everyone about who I am and where I come from.

But as a young woman, barely starting to make her way in the world and just really getting into college, the idea of embracing who I was didn't appeal to me – mainly because when I was younger, the features that my Latino side gifted me were often the things I was bullied for.

However, Pixar decided to release a little film called Coco. While I may not be of Mexican culture, the movie altered something in my brain that made me want to indeed start embracing my Latino culture – and these are my reasons why.

Obviously The Family Brought Me Closer With My Own

One of the biggest aspects of Latino culture—and really just any Spanish-speaking country—is that we value family heavily. When this film came out back in 2017, I considered myself relatively close with my family. I would call my mom, text my dad, and share funny memes with my brother, and I really thought that was good enough.

But Coco really started to make me think differently about the actual value of family and how important it is. From the first beats of this movie – which I consider one of Pixar's best films – we see just how important family is to the Rivera family, so much so that they have basically ostracized Hector for "leaving" his family decades before in pursuit of fame.

There was something about this family aspect that made me want to get closer to my family and embrace who they are. My family was never wrong. There was honestly never a reason for me to be distant. I grew up in a really loving household with two parents who did everything in their hearts to give my brother and me the world – truthfully; it was just a distance between school and life.

But Coco altered that perception in my mind, making me realize that I wasn't trying hard enough. So, after that, I went out of my way to help them out, to make calls, and to update them sometimes on the most mundane parts of my life—and you know why? That family aspect is really all we have sometimes, and I wanted to embrace it.

The Food Looked So Good I Had To Try To Make It Myself

Look, I'm a sucker for a good meal.

If you know me, you know I love cooking shows . Whether it's one that actually aims to teach you or it's another cooking competition from Gordon Ramsay , I love watching people cook. Now, in my twenties, my internal cookbook has only grown with age.

But Coco also made me want to start cooking more – specifically the Latino and Spanish food I had been missing out on my whole life because I was a picky eater. I began to learn how to make my abuela's empanadas, her arroz con pollo, her pernil, for so many reasons. But the biggest was that making this food brought me closer to her, even if she wasn't here with me anymore.

And the best part? Seeing my father's reactions. My dad always does this little "shoulder dance" when he eats good food, and he does that all the time with my cooking (not to toot my own horn). But what's even better than that is when he tells not only his wife but also his daughter that it's exactly how his mother used to make it. That's a compliment you can't buy.

Every Song Made Me Want To Get Up And Dance – Or Moved Me To Tears

I mean, I've always been a big fan of Disney music, and since Disney owns Pixar, it's pretty much a guarantee that there's going to be some song in any Pixar film. I'm a person who loves to listen to some of the most uplifting Disney songs out there.

However, the music in Coco unlocked a part of my brain I didn't know existed. I listened to this soundtrack for hours, even if there weren't that many songs to sing along with it, because I really connected with a lot of the lyrics in it. "Un Poco Loco" is one I still sing heavily even today.

God, and don't even get me started on "Remember Me." I saw this film in a theater with my dad, and the two of us were bawling like babies. The soft guitar mixed with the vocals ended me.

The Historical Aspect Of Honoring The Dead Was Something I Never Understood Until Now

I'll preface this by saying that I didn't grow up in a Mexican household, so I never celebrated El Dia de Los Muertos. I had certainly always heard about it—mainly as a little kid during my Scooby-Doo movie marathon , when I would watch Scooby-Doo! and the Monster of Mexico— but I never really understood the custom until now.

What makes Coco such a great film is that it teaches you so much about Mexican culture and the reasoning behind it without causing information overload. I feel like I learned more about the holiday than I have in my numerous years of living, and it made me understand why we honor the dead.

And while I don't personally celebrate the holiday, I did do a lot more research into why Latinos, in general, care so highly for the ones that came before us. And now, I have a greater respect for something like this that I never knew before.

Seeing So Many Characters Unapologetically Love Their Culture Was Something I Desperately Needed To See

The biggest reason Coco helped me embrace my Latina culture is that everyone in the film loved being who they were.

Again, I was bullied mercilessly as a young girl for a lot of the traits I was given, from my thick curly hair to my freckled cheeks to my curvy figure, which wasn't as appealing as a kid—all of it I attribute to the Latina side of me.

We rank all of the Pixar films that don't have a sequel or prequel.

But watching Coco's characters healed my inner child. Seeing people so unapologetically love who they are, where they come from, and so much more was something I needed to see. It made me realize that I really shouldn't give a damn about what anyone thinks about me because I love who I am and where I come from, and no one should get to dictate that from me.

Truthfully, this movie inspired me to watch a lot more shows and movies about people of Latino origin. Heck, Miles Morales became my favorite Spider-Man , and now my father and I share a love of the Spider-Verse movies together because of it—and I started watching it because I heard Morales was Puerto-Rican.

But I never would have gotten into the film if it hadn't been for Coco, the first film that made me really realize as a teenager that being Latina wasn't just a bloodline – it was a gift, a privilege, and I learned to love it as much as I always should have.

If you haven't seen Coco in a long time, I would suggest checking it out and rewatching it – and be sure not to watch it on an empty stomach because you will want a tamale afterward.

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AFI Movie Club: COCO

Pixar’s Academy Award ® -winning COCO was brought to afterlife by countless artists and craftspeople – among them, Edward James Olmos, an AFI Honorary Degree recipient and longtime AFI Trustee.

Movie Trivia about COCO

DID YOU KNOW?

Throughout the production, Pixar also worked with a team of cultural advisers, including Marcela Davison Aviles, playwright Octavio Solis and political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz. They would come in every three months to screen the work in progress – giving notes to make sure the film was culturally authentic.

DID YOU KNOW?

Director Lee Unkrich and the filmmaking team went to Mexico on multiple research trips to help make the film as authentic as possible. While visiting Mexico City, Morelia, Oaxaca and Guanajuato, they took thousands of photos, spoke with locals and met with many different families – sketching different people to help inspire characters in the movie.

The orange flower seen throughout the film is the Cempasúchil – a type of marigold that is native to Mexico. The flower is used in the tradition of Día de Muertos in Mexico to guide the deceased to the living.

The look of the Land of the Dead is inspired by the Mexican city of Guanajuato, which has colorful houses placed on the hillsides in such a way that they look almost stacked.

Anthony Gonzalez was originally just hired to do the temporary voice of Miguel in COCO but was so good he was ultimately offered the role.

COCO surpassed THE AVENGERS (2012) as the highest grossing movie of all time in Mexico.

DID YOU KNOW?

Anthony Gonzalez – the voice of Miguel in COCO – can also be seen in AFI alum Daniel Sawka’s film ICEBOX. Gonzalez appears in both the short film and the feature length version of the movie.

COCO marks the first film with a nine-figure budget to feature an almost entirely Latino principal cast. While the Latino community accounts for half of Angelenos, 39% of Californians and 18% of the U.S. population, they are dramatically underrepresented onscreen. To learn more, read the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative here .

At the 90th Academy Awards®, COCO won the Oscar® for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for “Remember Me.”

Learn more at the AFI Catalog

The movie doesn’t end at the credits: Family-friendly Discussion Questions

Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram now using #AFIMovieClub. Or post your responses in the comment section below.

-John Ratzenberger has voiced a character in every PIXAR film. Were you able to place his voice in COCO?

– How many Pixar easter eggs did you find?

-Why is a film like COCO important in today’s societal landscape? How is the Latino community underrepresented in film both onscreen and off and what steps need to be taken to solve this issue?

-Who is Coco? Who is Coco forgetting?

-Why is music so important to Miguel? What in the end is more important to Miguel than music?

-What is the significance of the ofrenda in Mexican culture? Who was missing from the ofrenda in COCO?

-What do you do to honor and preserve the memory of those loved ones that you may have lost?

-What do you know about your own family history? Are there things you would like to know more about?

-What is the significance of the song “Remember Me”?

-How would you rate COCO?

New to AFI Movie Club? Want to learn more?

AFI has created a global, virtual gathering of those who love the movies. Each day’s film is accompanied by fun facts, family-friendly discussion points and material from the AFI Archive to enrich your viewing experience.

Learn more in our FAQ section .

How to Watch COCO Now: View Options

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Movie Review: Peace (and pieces) of mind ‘Inside Out 2'

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows, from left, Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, background left, Anger, voiced by Lewis Black, Disgust, voiced by Liza Lapira, Envy, voiced by Ayo Edebiri, and Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, in a scene from “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows, from left, Sadness, voiced by Phyllis Smith, Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, Disgust, voiced by Liza Lapira, Fear, voiced by Tony Hale and Anger, voiced by Lewis Black, in a scene from “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows, from left, Sadness, voiced by Phyllis Smith, left, and Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, in a scene from “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows, from left, Embarrassment, voiced by Paul Walter Hauser, Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, Envy, voiced by Ayo Edebiri, and Ennui, voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos in a scene from “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows promotional art for “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows, from left, Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, Embarrassment, voiced by Paul Walter Hauser, Envy, voiced by Ayo Edebiri, Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, Disgust, voiced by Liza Lapira, Anger, voiced by Lewis Black (foreground), Fear, voiced by Tony Hale, and Sadness, voiced by Phyllis Smith, in a scene from “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar shows Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, left, and Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, in a scene from “Inside Out 2.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

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Sequels have been a touchy subject when it comes to Pixar, but it’s hard to deny the natural premise of “Inside Out 2.” It’s been nine years since “Inside Out,” yet in the span between that film and its new sequel, Riley, the young girl with a head full of emotions, has gone from 11 years old to 13. She’s just grown up a little.

Or maybe a lot. In the middle of the night, the old gang of Joy ( Amy Poehler ), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Anger (Lewis Black) are roused from their beds by a soft beep, like a fire alarm in need of a new battery, but soon it’s sounding an all-out emergency. On their console a red light blinks. “What’s that?” one says. “Puberty,” the button reads. Soon, construction workers are swarming the control room for “demo day,” with wrecking balls making room for “the others.”

In come a new gaggle of emotions said to be more sophisticated: Anxiety ( Maya Hawke ), Envy ( Ayo Edebiri ), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). The next morning, Riley wakes up to find herself unusually stinky. Life, as they say, comes at you pretty fast. “Inside Out 2” turns out to be not just a modest, inch-things-along sequel but a follow-up of cataclysmic proportions.

FILE - Honoree Nicole Kidman speaks during the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to her, Saturday, April 27, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The tribute will air on TNT on Monday. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

Tempting as it is to take any revisiting of “Inside Out” — a high water mark for not just Pixar but ’10s American movies — as sacrilegious, its sequel is deftly sensitive to one of the most awkward chapters of life. The giddy sense of imagination is a little less boundless this time. One could certainly look at “Inside Out 2” like a parent eyeing a teenager and thinking the younger version was cuter and less whiny. But the filmmakers of “Inside Out 2” have managed again to filter complex psychological developments into a bright, entertaining head trip that in its finest moments packs an emotional wallop.

I would peg Joy as the real protagonist of the first “Inside Out.” That movie, really, hinged on the blue-haired sprite’s desperate race to preserve all the happiness of childhood. Aided especially by Poehler’s brilliant voice work, Joy — a kind of stand-in for parents wanting only the best for their kids — was less just another emotion than an unflagging guardian learning that sometimes letting go is best.

This time, Riley feels more the main character, though Anxiety, an excitable, orange, bug-eyed Muppet-like thing, is increasingly calling the shots. Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) is now taller, has a few good friends and is still playing hockey. Her internal landscape is shifting, too. Boy Band Island is done, for one. And out of her pools of memories, new strands are growing a tree-shaped Belief System. Just who Riley is, at her core, gets tested and reshaped in “Inside Out 2.”

Some of the brain trust on the film are also new. Kelsey Mann, a longtime Pixar veteran, takes over directing from Pete Docter (now the Pixar chief) to make his debut feature. The script is by Meg LeFauve, who co-wrote the original, and Dave Holstein.

My recollections of “Inside Out” — if my memory orbs have been correctly filed — are mostly of all those glowing balls of the past and Joy and Sadness’ mad dashes through the back of Riley’s mind, a pun-filled inner space both literal and metaphorical. Plus, we can’t forget, Richard Kind’s voice as Bing Bong.

Much is the same in “Inside Out 2” (though, alas, Bing Bong sleeps with the fishes). But the film is a little more tilted outside Riley’s mind. As the school year is coming to a close, Riley heads to a weekend hockey camp that’s a preview of her high-school life to come.

New stresses are developing. Her pals (voiced by Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green and Grace Lu) are headed to a different school, Riley learns. On the ice, what was once carefree play is becoming a more complicated experience plagued by self-doubt. At camp, Riley really wants to impress an older star player named Val (Lilimar Hernandez). To do so, Anxiety, usurping Joy, increasingly sacrifices core beliefs to manically build Riley a new identity. Joy and others, booted from the control room, again have to work frantically to mount a resistance, while at the same time learning a lesson about the need to reconcile — not just try to forget — less happy memories.

“Inside Out 2,” which arrives after a period of soul-searching for Pixar, both recaptures some of the animation studio’s magic and reminds us that rekindling the ambitious spirit of Pixar’s heyday isn’t so easy. The sequel stays close to familiar neural pathways. There are new cerebral puns — the echoing depths of a Sar-"chasm,” a brainstorm that rains light bulbs — and a new cartoon relic of childhood to replace Bing Bong: a character named Bloofy, voiced by Ron Funches. It’s easier to see where this “Inside Out” is headed and a little harder to be dazzled by what unfolds.

But it’s aim is remarkably true. Confronting the struggles and realities of anxiety, particularly for teenage girls, could hardly be a more laudable undertaking. And the care is taken here to illustrate how new impulses can run roughshod over a young person and throw their internal compass out of whack.

Pixar, like other studios wrestling with a new media landscape, has dabbled in recent years with more short-form and digital-friendly content. But Docter has steered Pixar back to focusing on feature films with robust theatrical releases. (“Inside Out 2” is to exclusively play for 100 days in theaters.) So in more ways than one, Mann’s movie feels like a much-needed feature-length refuge from today’s anxiety-producing devices. Unlike many of Pixar’s moving metaphors of parenthood, this one is, affectingly, for the kids.

“Inside Out 2,” a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for some thematic elements. Running time: 96 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Goofs When Gretchen uses the word "message" in sign language, she uses a gesture similar to texting on a cell phone. Cell phones with a keyboard hadn't been invented yet in the era the movie is set in.
Connections Referenced in Amanda the Jedi Show: Everyone in ABIGAIL is DUMB... and I love them | Explained (2024)

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‘Brats’ Review: Feeding St. Elmo’s Ire

In this documentary, Andrew McCarthy examines fame and disappointment as a member of the so-called Brat Pack of the 1980s.

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Two men in chambray shirts stand in a doorway, smiling softly toward the camera.

By Lisa Kennedy

A thread of vulnerability weaves through “Brats,” the actor-director Andrew McCarthy’s new documentary. In it, McCarthy, the star of ’80s hits like “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty in Pink,” tries to make peace with having been branded a member of the “ Brat Pack ” by the press.

In 1985, New York Magazine christened a collection of young actors with that sticky sobriquet — itself a wink to the midcentury Rat Pack . The quasi-gonzo cover story by David Blum (who makes an appearance in the film) ran right before “St. Elmo’s Fire” opened and a few months after “The Breakfast Club” hit multiplexes. Hollywood’s youth quake was on. But not everyone reaped the benefits.

Early in the film, McCarthy says that the article “affected my life massively.” Over the next four decades, his filmography wasn’t what he’d hoped for. Testing a theory that his fellow Brat Pack actors may have felt similarly pigeonholed, he phones Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe and others, whom he hasn’t spoken to in decades.

McCarthy interviews them in person, sitting (or in the case of Estevez, standing) in what starts to resemble a therapy session. Often, McCarthy appears to be the only one who is still working through the trauma of instant, if fragile, icon status.

The film’s through-line of woundedness is by turns touching, irritating and occasionally illuminating: A visit to the writer Malcolm Gladwell is insightful; watching Dick Cavett and Phil Donahue fawn offers a cringey lesson in how easy it is to rev the star-stoking machinery.

And about that 1985 article: It doesn’t actually mention McCarthy much. Though one of his co-stars had this to say about him: “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.” If McCarthy’s ire with the Brat Pack moniker begins to feel psychologically displaced, might this be the reason?

Brats Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Hulu .

'Inside Out 2' review: The battle between Joy, Anxiety feels very real in profound sequel

For teens, those who aren't yet teens, and anyone who was once a teen, the Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” hits like an amusing, profound wrecking ball.

The original animated 2015 comedy “Inside Out” took audiences into young girl Riley’s complex mind and showcased a bevy of colorful emotions trying to keep it together for the kid’s sake, crafting an uncannily relatable movie in the process. Directed by Kelsey Mann, the next chapter (★★★½ out of four; rated PG; in theaters Friday) grows up alongside the newly minted teen and imagines the internal struggle, for all of us, when anxiety takes control.

The first "Inside Out" ended with Riley turning 12, and the sequel catches up with her (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) – as well as her core emotions Joy ( Amy Poehler ), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) – a year later. Riley has gone through a growth spurt, got braces (Disgust must have loved that day) and two besties, plus is a hockey star.

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The high school coach (Yvette Nicole Brown) sees her play and invites her to a skills camp – do well there and she could be playing as a freshman beside her super-cool idol Val Ortiz (Lilimar). The night before, however, Riley’s mind is thrown into disarray when Joy and Co. notice the red “puberty” button flashing and a demolition crew arrives to make way for new emotions. With frizzy hair and big plans to change things around, Anxiety ( Maya Hawke ) is the leader of this bunch that also includes precocious Envy (Ayo Edebiri), disinterested Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) – or, as she calls herself, “the boredom” – and painfully shy Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

The major friction within the first movie – Joy needing to find a way to deal with Sadness – seems small potatoes compared to a battle over Riley's entire belief system. As the girl is forced to choose between hanging with her friends or making new ones like Val, Anxiety pulls a coup, ditching the conflicted youngster's Sense of Self and exiling Joy's old emotions to the back of Riley’s mind with a mountain of bad memories.

“Inside Out 2” frontloads the funny bits and then wallops you in the final act, which ambitiously depicts the desperate hopelessness when anxiety has a hold and won’t let go. (“I don’t know how to stop Anxiety," Joy says, one of the truest things you’ll ever hear in an animated fantasy.)

The middle is where it loses focus, as Joy’s group goes on a mission to set Riley right before it’s too late. The original movie took a similar tack but did it better, and the sequel misses a real chance to flesh out the intriguing new emotions more. Aside from Anxiety, a truly inspired Disney antagonist, they feel more like side characters than Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness did in the first outing.

The way these movies artfully create a connection between real life and a fantastical inner existence is still top notch. Every parent of a tween or teenager will feel seen via a construction sign that reads “Puberty is messy” and get a kick out of Mount Crushmore, part of a revamped Imagination Land. And while there’s no Bing Bong around this time, the introduction of preschool cartoon canine Bloofy (Ron Funches) and the scene-stealing Nostalgia (June Squibb) showcase that signature “Inside Out” cleverness in its personalities.

Pixar has rightfully taken knocks for sequels and prequels that don’t hold up to the beloved originals. Recent films like “Turning Red,” “Luca” and “Soul” have the novel spark that's missing from, say, “Monsters University,” “Cars 3” and “Lightyear.” But “Inside Out 2” is one of the better revisits in the studio’s history because of how well it knows its audience.

Who hasn't felt anxiety getting the better of joy, or a natural connection between sadness and embarrassment? With empathy, hope and a heap of metaphors, it's a matured "Inside Out" that still understands the wonders and wrinkles of being a kid.

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Coco movie review & film summary (2017)
Coco. "Coco" is the sprightly story of a young boy who wants to be a musician and somehow finds himself communing with talking skeletons in the land of the dead. Directed by Lee Unkrich ("Toy Story 3") and veteran Pixar animator Adrian Molina, and drawing heavily on Mexican folklore and traditional designs, it has catchy music, a complex but ...
Coco (2017)
Mar 1, 2024 Full Review Denise Pieniazek Metacultura (AR) Coco is a story full of emotion and deep entertainment. The proposal emphasizes the importance of traditions and family, but stripping ...
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It has that unmistakable mixture of comedy and sentiment that you associate with a Pixar movie. Great fun. Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2022. Coco is a film that reminds us of the ...
Coco Movie Review
The story of Coco is a rather typical hero's journey/coming of age tale, with Miguel going on a grand adventure in the Land of the Dead and learning an important lesson about both himself and his family along the way. Miguel's motivation throughout the movie - wanting to follow his dream, but not feeling understood by his family - provides for an exceptionally universal jumping off point, and ...
Coco Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 150 ): Kids say ( 170 ): Colorful, beautifully animated, and culturally vibrant, Coco is an affecting, multilayered coming-of-age drama. Miguel just wants to make music, even though it's forbidden to him because his family believes that music cursed them.
Review: 'Coco' Brings the Pixar Touch to Death
Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) in "Coco," the new film from Pixar. Disney/Pixar. One of the pleasures of a new Pixar feature is the chance to be amazed by what animation can do. Sometimes ...
'Coco' Review
Steeped in Mexican culture and folklore, 'Coco' ranks among Disney-Pixar's most engaging efforts. Dia de los Muertos, the multi-day Mexican-originated holiday honoring dead family members and ...
'Coco' Review: Musical Journey Through Mexican Underworld
Coco, Lee Unkrich, Pixar. Film Review: Pixar's 'Coco'. Reviewed at Frank G. Wells screening room, Burbank, Oct. 18, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 105 MIN. Production: (Animated) A ...
Coco (2017)
Coco: Directed by Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina. With Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach. Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer.
'Coco': Pixar's Day of the Dead tale comes to dazzling life
Movie Review ★★★★ 'Coco,' with the voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renée Victor. Directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, from a ...
Coco Review
Posted: Nov 21, 2017 6:50 pm. Both figuratively and literally, Coco is Pixar's most human film. The movie delivers a compelling story centered around memorable characters that feel alive -- even ...
"Coco" Is the Definitive Movie for This Moment
June 16, 2018. "Coco" is a movie about borders more than anything—the beauty in their porousness, the absolute pain produced when a border locks you away from your family. Photograph ...
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Coco - which can be compared to the Guillermo del Toro-produced movie The Book of Life - takes a particular line on this phenomenon: that it is an empowering, family-friendly folk myth that ...
Coco
'Coco' is a movie that does the same for one's family. A must-see for all ages, and as a family if possible. Read More ... We recap the just-concluded festival with a list of award winners and review summaries for dozens of films making their world premieres in Cannes, including new titles from David Cronenberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrea Arnold ...
Coco Review
Coco Review. Miguel (Gonzalez) is a 12-year-old boy whose family have banned music. He longs to play, but when he steals a guitar belonging to his deceased icon, Ernesto De La Cruz (Bratt), he's ...
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REVIEW: Pixar's new movie 'Coco' is a fantastic family-friendly feast for the eyes and the heart. Hector and Miguel meet in the Land of the Dead in "Coco." Disney/Pixar. "Coco" is a heartwarming ...
Coco
There's a visual gag about "sporty underwear for wrestlers.". Miguel breaks into a crypt and steals Ernesto's guitar. Hector manipulates Miguel with a lie. Many, if not most, of Miguel's relatives—both living and dead—harbor an outsized fear of music that causes them to treat Miguel cruelly at times.
Review: Pixar's 'Coco' sings a high-spirited but sometimes faltering
Nov. 21, 2017 12:35 PM PT. Film Critic. Can a person honor his family and pursue his dreams? That is the question at the heart of "Coco," a whimsical and high-spirited romp through the ...
'Coco' Review: A Colorful Contemplation Of Death, Family, And ...
Pixar is back - the bold, creative Coco washes away the bland taste of The Good Dinosaur and Cars 3. While not quite as clever as Inside Out or Wall-E, Coco manages to tell a family-friendly story ...
Coco Review
Coco Review. The latest animated wonder from Pixar, Coco, is a poignant story of family and a rich homage to Mexican culture. ... here is a Pixar movie that gives us something that doesn't feel ...
'Coco' Review: A Sweet Family Tale That Joins the Ranks of Pixar's Best
With an original story by Unkrich, Jason Katz, Matthew Aldrich and Adrian Molina (and a script penned by Aldrich and Molina), the big-hearted Coco joins the high ranks of Pixar's best in telling ...
Movie Review: Coco (2017)
And while the plot can become convoluted, the film is not really about the narrative but about the joy of self expression and, when we hear Miguel singing "Un Poco Loco" with the bone rattling Héctor, it is a moment of rare exuberance. Critical Movie Critic Rating: 4. Movie Review: Phantom Thread (2017)
'Coco' movie review: A much-needed return to form for Pixar
Pixar's Coco, though, takes on the bigger challenge of reckoning with the cost, and wondering where the limit lies. SEE ALSO: Pixar's first-ever VR experience lets you explore the Land of the Dead
Why Watching Coco Is The Reason I Started To Embrace My ...
But Coco really started to make me think differently about the actual value of family and how important it is. From the first beats of this movie - which I consider one of Pixar's best films ...
AFI Movie Club: COCO
Pixar's Academy Award®-winning COCO was brought to afterlife by countless artists and craftspeople - among them, Edward James Olmos, an AFI Honorary Degree recipient and longtime AFI Trustee. Movie Trivia about COCO DID YOU KNOW? Throughout the production, Pixar also worked with a team of cultural advisers, including Marcela Davison Aviles, playwright Octavio Solis and political ...
Coco Movie Family Tree Explained
The movie namesake, Coco, is Miguel's great-grandmother, Elena's mother, and Enrique's grandmother. Her relationship with her father was precious to her, ...
Movie Review: Peace (and pieces) of mind 'Inside Out 2'
Sequels have been a touchy subject when it comes to Pixar, but it's hard to deny the natural premise of "Inside Out 2." It's been nine years since "Inside Out," yet in the span between that film and its new sequel, Riley, the young girl with a head full of emotions, has gone from 11 years old to 13.
Cuckoo (2024)
Cuckoo: Directed by Tilman Singer. With Hunter Schafer, Jan Bluthardt, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick. A 17-year old girl is forced to move with her family to a resort where things are not what they seem.
'Brats' Review: Feeding St. Elmo's Ire
'Brats' Review: Feeding St. Elmo's Ire In this documentary, Andrew McCarthy examines fame and disappointment as a member of the so-called Brat Pack of the 1980s. Listen to this article · 2: ...
'Inside Out 2' review: Pixar movie makes you feel all the emotions
The original animated 2015 comedy "Inside Out" took audiences into young girl Riley's complex mind and showcased a bevy of colorful emotions trying to keep it together for the kid's sake ...

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Reviewed at Frank G. Wells screening room, Burbank, Oct. 18, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 105 MIN.

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