COCO

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Animation: A

Oh, Pixar -- how great it is when you are great! And you are great more often than most, if less often than you used to be: Pixar films were reliably worth the time and money, without exception, with every film released between 1995 and 2004. I'll never really understand the enduring appeal of Cars (2006), their first movie that was really good rather than great, yet is the second of their franchises to spawn not just one, but two sub-par sequels (in 2011 and 2017; Cars 3 was the first-ever Pixar film I never even bothered to see, from sheer disinterest). For the past decade or so, they've been churning out about two adequate movies for every great one.

Case in point: after 2015's truly spectacular Inside Out was followed by the undeniably entertaining mixed bag that was The Good Dinosaur later that same year; the delightful yet by-definition unoriginal Finding Dory  last year; and then Cars 3 earlier this year -- two sequels in a row, in fact. And if there's any company that benefits most from not recycling material, it's Pixar -- who steps up to the plate yet again with Coco, a movie lacking in the thrills of the Toy Story series or The Incredibles or WALL-E or the sophisticated wit aimed at the adults in the audience found in most of Pixar's output, but containing all the visual dazzle now long expected of the Pixar brand, and a refreshingly straightforward amount of depth and heart.

I didn't laugh as much at Coco as I have tended to at most Pixar films in the past. I may have cried more than I have at any other Pixar film -- and that includes the opening sequence of Up (2009). This is a genuinely moving film, with pretty universal messages of the importance of familial love, and a very specific context in which to give it: during the Mexican tradition of honoring ancestors on The Day of the Dead.

Should I mention the ways in which Coco is unwittingly politicized? Talk about uncanny timing: animated features of Pixar's type are many years in the making, and when work on this began, no one had any idea it would be released to an America with Donald Trump as president, a man who has whipped up hatred toward immigrants and Mexicans in particular. And here comes along a film about a Mexican family, starring a clearly deliberate all-Latino voice cast -- you won't find any white people speaking with fake Mexican accents here.

And the script, by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich (with additional original story credit by Jason Katz and co-director Lee Unkrich), is pretty close to perfect. There is a semi-provocative sequence regarding skeletal ancestor characters passing through check points to visit family on the Day of the Dead that's pretty evocative of immigration, but it stops short of being any direct commentary on immigration issues. This would have been an interesting choice for Mexican characters regardless of the era of the film's release, though.

As it happens, the film's original title was Dia de los Muertos, but when Disney made the clearly misguided attempt at trademarking the phrase and it understandably caused a backlash among Mexican-Americans (who all was in the room when everyone present thought that was a good idea?), the title was changed to Coco. This is the name of a minor but key character, the oldest living relative -- great-grandmother -- of a little boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez). He is the central character, and he loves music, but is forbidden to play it because his great grandmother forbade it after her musician husband abandoned the family in favor of his musical passions. The family went on to become shoemakers who for generations refuse to have music in their homes. Sounds pretty depressing, no?

There's something a little flimsy about that premise -- only in an uber-manufactured world like a cartoon would such a scenario fly -- but, oh well. When Miguel attempts to steal the mounted guitar at the grave of his musical idol, the strum of the guitar on the night of the Day of the Dead passes him through to the world of the Dead.

It is here that he meets all the deceased ancestral characters, each with the same basic design as the skeletons typically decorating the scene at Dia de Muertos celebrations -- stark skeletal features on which are imposed stenciled patterns. Miguel finds himself in a spectacularly rendered "Land of the Dead," where the animation is on the level of all the best Pixar films that came before it -- painstakingly colored, awe inspiring in its detail, dazzling in its scope. This can even be said of scenes in cemeteries where people have brought offerings and candles to honor their dearly departed.

It's tempting to ask if Coco is like Corpse Bride, just because both feature skeleton characters. The key difference is that Coco places them in a very specific cultural context, and expands the imagination and the world they inhabit. Coco also has far greater depth in its themes, storytelling, and even its visual palate. Miguel meets his ancestors who began this moratorium on playing music in the family, and they must find a way to help him return to the land of the living. The aforementioned singer (voiced by Benjamin Bratt), and Hector (Gael García Bernal), a man denied entry to the land of the living to visit for the Day of the Dead because he no longer has living family to remember him, also feature prominently.

I suppose it should be noted that not only does Coco deal pretty directly with the concept of death and dealing with the loss of family members, actual murder does fit into the plot. I'm not sure how appropriate it would be for the smallest of children, who could be frightened by some of it. That said, children of at least Miguel's age (about ten, I suppose?) are certainly perfect audiences for Coco's themes of family and honoring elders lost.

Rarely is an animated film as textured in its storytelling as it is in its visual scope, and Coco delivers in spades on all fronts. The final fifteen minutes or so are particularly moving, and tie it all together in ways not easily predicted from the beginning of the story. This is a movie that is beautiful both on sight and in feeling, an accomplishment that belies its surface simplicity. It's family entertainment done right.

Visiting the Land of the Dead is more fun than you might expect.

Overall: A-