Coco (2017)

          The release of a new Pixar movie is still guaranteed to send intense ripples of excitement through any moviegoer, let alone film critics. Their run of unmatched and inspired creativity has dried up in recent years, with only Inside Out (Pete Doctor, 2015) truly matching their past glories since at least 2010. But that initial run of movies from Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), all the way up to that 2010 release Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich), is still a stunning canon of animated films, unique in their superior quality, but different enough from each other to see each one as a huge creative leap forward from the last.

          Which brings us to Coco, an original story after back-to-back sequels from the Pixar braintrust. Having said that, this is an original story in so far as the premise, and the characters, are brand new. But the bones of the narrative are truly tried and tested, a solid, dependable framework that goes nowhere unexpected. It would have been a joy to see what Brad Bird would have created from the premise of Coco, whose own Pixar movies, The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouiolle (2007), practically sparkle with narrative unpredictability.

          Young Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) is the youngest in a family of shoemakers in small town Mexico. The whole family is employed in the family business, and have been ever since Miguel’s great, great grandfather walked out on his wife and daughter to pursue a music career. This event in the past has lead to a ban on music for all members of the family. Miguel harbours a secret passion and longing to be a musician, and he hopes that since finding out that his great, great grandfather was the famous singing sensation Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), his dream will become a reality.

          The largest portion of Coco’s narrative takes place in the Mexican Land of the Dead, an afterlife traditional to Mexican cultural heritage. And you’ll notice that the above plot synopsis makes no mention of this section of the movie. There is a LOT to unpack in Coco’s narrative before things get to the inevitable quest to make it home before sunrise. From establishing the family’s history, to the ban of music, to Miguel’s love of music, to his and Mexico’s adoration of Ernesto, to Miguel’s plan to win the town’s singing competition, to the complication that launches Miguel into the Land of the Dead. Many of these threads could warrant their own entire movie and not be at a loss for story.

          By the time we get to the Land of the Dead, and there are more new characters to meet, and an entire fleshed out infrastructure to develop, things have become so stacked that it’s a relief to get to the basic fetch quest once its established what Miguel is going to do to try to get home again. Brevity is not a virtue of Coco, which in one sense is admirable, particularly for a family film, but in another there is a longing for a slightly more streamlined narrative, with one or two plot threads dropped entirely, that would more fully flesh out Miguel and his own needs and wants.

          The other major disappointment is the Land of the Dead itself. After a stunning journey there across a floating bridge made of Mexican marigold petals, and the initial reveal of a towering city verse of houses upon houses stretching as far as the eye can see, to discover that the Land itself is nothing more than a town full of dead relatives as skeletons, with normal buildings, government, law enforcement, and standard earthly recreational activities seems a missed opportunity. There is little mystery or magic about the afterlife as presented here, which makes Miguel’s journey through it feel even more pedestrian.

          Despite all this, there is much to enjoy and even love about Coco. It is certainly never boring, and the sentiment expressed by the story of a young man needing to reconnect to his family and his ancestors, while still being a unique individual, is expertly played out when the focus is on the family unit alone. By the film’s end, it would take a particularly hard heart not to shed a tear. There is also a clear reverence for the warmth and distinctiveness of Mexican culture, with many aspects coming into the film’s overall witty pastiche. Thankfully any sense of cultural appropriation is happily somewhat undermined by an excellent uniformly Mexican and Mexican-American voice cast. And there is undoubtedly applause to be given for a family film, particularly one from Disney, that so directly deals with death, mourning, and the afterlife.

          This a warm, often lovely movie animated expertly by the now top of their league animators at Pixar. There is joy in virtually every frame, and it rarely stops for breath throughout its nearly two hour runtime. While it might not break the mould in a story sense, this is still a winning feature, and still head and shoulders above virtually all other animated fare.