An Elaborate, Beautiful Tapestry of Sights and Music

Rating: 8/10 (25 November 2017)

This past summer I was given an opportunity to sit in on a feedback screening for this film. The story structure was pretty much all there but the layers-upon-layers of painstaking animation were unfinished, with large swaths of the movie being represented by little more than storyboards. It was quite an experience being able to witness just how elaborate an animated movie like Coco can be. To be able to see a literal army of artists, storytellers, engineers, animators and musicians toiling on a project partway through was like getting an exclusive tour of a new theme park months before it's set to open.
So to say that the final product is almost as exhilarating as attending that screening, should be considered a testament to just how solid Coco is. As a story, as an animated comedy/musical and as an event for families whose exposure to Pixar is now a generation thick, Coco has just about everything you'd expect. It's effortlessly charming, brilliantly paced and plucks at your heartstrings like a seasoned mariachi at just the right moments. Considering that the same production studio that gave us Toy Story (1995) hasn't made a movie this affecting since Inside Out (2015) (or as I'd argue Toy Story 3 (2010)), Coco stands as a stark, defiant pronouncement that Pixar's quality bubble hasn't actually popped.
Coco tells the story of a young Mexican boy named Miguel Rivera (Gonzalez) whose family's humble cross-generational contribution to their small regional town is a shoe shop and an all-consuming hatred of music. Miguel however doesn't share the same passions as his extended family and often hides away learning the gentle guitar riffs of music and screen legend Ernesto De La Cruz (Bratt). After a series of confrontations and plot reveals, Miguel attempts to steal a guitar during the town's Day of the Dead festival which curses him into an in-between state where he is neither living nor dead. To reverse the curse, Miguel recruits desperate soul Hector (Garcia Bernal) and is compelled to approach the ghost of Ernesto De La Cruz while avoiding the spirits of his dead family.
As you can tell by the synopsis, the mechanics of the film's supernatural bent, how the curse works, who De La Cruz is in relation to Miguel, who Hector is, why he's helping Miguel and why the Rivera's are not big fans of music in the first place (not to mention why the movie is called Coco) are all a lot to soak in. The film swiftly covers as many of its bases as possible in the first act and drops exposition every fifteen minutes or so as to assuage audience members who can't grasp the social significance of an ofrenda.
Thankfully instead of it coming across as the equivalent of explaining why the toys in Toy Story don't move, all of the complexities and contrivances are complimented by an emotional and/or a plot-focused coda. Why is Hector willing to debase himself to enter the land of the living? Because he wants to see his daughter one more time before she enters the land of the dead and he is "forgotten". Why does family matriarch Mama Imelda (Ubach) forbid music? Because Imelda sees music as antithetical to family unity. Even a seemingly half-cocked explanation of Alebrijes gets a punch- line that resonates, even if it takes two acts to get there.
What's more the film doesn't stop to parse many of the culture- specific details, but rather lets them wash over you in a sea of color and textures. This gives audiences otherwise unaccustomed to the traditions of Dia de los Muerto the challenge of picking things up via context clues while giving audiences like myself the dopamine tickle one gets by referencing la chancla. There's a lived-in quality which is nice considering Coco could have so easily been a guided tour through Mexican cultural mythology a la The Book of Life (2014).
My largest complaint remains virtually the same from when the Pixar marketing team handed out the post-movie questionnaire back in July. For a movie about family, it seems a little odd that Miguel's living, breathing family is left almost completely absent throughout the story. A few cutaways to Mama (Espinosa) and Abuelita (Victor) worrying about Miguel might have been enough to give the film a smidgen more heft, even if it were to slow Coco's zippy pace. This is not to say the last act doesn't pack one hell of an emotional, familial wallop. By the time we get to the last vocal performance, there was not a single dry eye in the theater including my own.
Coco is a gorgeous, intricate and affecting animated musical-comedy whose cleverness and light touch is made all the more impressive by just how many plates are being balanced in the air. It falters only a little in regards to story and it may prove a bit slight in ambition for Pixar's growingly finicky fandom. Thankfully it makes up for it in detail and meticulously thought out world-building which proves both fun and enlightening. Check this one out for sure and bring the entire family.