Wow - Â¿podria estar muerto, por favor?

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2019)

I remember being blown out of my socks by the first Pixar movie, which I saw at an animation festival in the mid-80s: A child-lamp playing with a ball, squishing it, and getting consoled by mother-lamp. It was only a minute of computer graphics, and the CGI was amazing for the day, but the short film differed deeply from similar efforts of the era: it actually had a story!
Fast forward, and things have not changed: still state-of-the-art in visual quality, and still outstanding stories. Even their second sequels (Toy Story 3?) are far above the level of most animated films.
Coco is no exception. The story of a boy, who first has to learn the value of family to understand that only that knowledge can fulfill his life's dream, is amazing. How do you make skeletons charming? Well, that question is answered in Coco! In all aspects, from the musical numbers, to the voice characters, to the storytelling, and of course the colorful animation, this is a superb film.
I almost feel guilty for not giving it a 9 or 10, but while the film did give me a lump in my throat, it did so using well honed plot twist techniques, such as turning an apparent hero into a demon, or swiftly reconciling people even though one of them has hated the other for 100 years. The tricks of the trade are applied here as deftly as I have ever seen, but the best of the best don't need to apply them at all.