COCO is heading to notch up that Oscar grail and emerges as another jewel in Pixar's ever-impressive crown

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2017)

COCO, Pixar's 3D animation tearjerker, ushers in a buoyant epoch when Pixar bracingly and fully sinks its teeth into ethnic pluralism and the first round is from USA's adjacent neighbor, Mexico.
The story takes place on the Day of the Dead (starting from 31st October), the annual Mexican holiday when the living ones gather together to reminisce their deceased family members and friends, predicated upon which, director Lee Unkrich, co-director Adrian Molina and their co- screenwriters envisage a kaleidoscopic world beyond the grave, in the business-as-usual Land of the Dead, if you are rich and famous in this life, like the legendary musician/film star Ernest de la Cruz (Bratt), who is the hero of our leading character, a 12-year-old Mexican boy Miguel (Gonzalez), you can parlay your career into the afterlife, the only modification is the physical form, now you are a skeleton! Moreover, on the Day of the Dead, the dead can also across the marigold bridge to our world, to visit their families, provided their photos are presented on the family ofrenda.
Miguel is from a household oddly at loggerheads with music, because his great-great-grandfather chooses a music career over his family, so music is the absolute taboo in the house, but after being convinced that Ernest is his great-great-grandfather, and magically yet inexplicably transferred to the Land of the Dead when he thrums Ernest's guitar in his tomb (a hiccup in the otherwise cogent and perceptive script), after the initial befuddlement, he embarks on a quest to seek the blessing from Ernest, in order to pursue a music career like him, before returning to the Land of the Living. En route, he gainsays the blessing from his great-great-grandma Imelda (Ubach), which contains a proviso that he must forswear his musician ambition, and is helped by Héctor Rivera (Bernal), a down-in-the-luck former collaborator of Ernest, to infiltrate into Ernest's palace. In return, Miguel agrees to bring a picture of him to his daughter, whom Héctor can finally pay his visit, and time is kicking because his nonagenarian daughter is the last one on the other side who still remembers him, if her memory of him fades away, he will meet the "truth" death, vanishing from thin air.
The plot spiritedly darkens and thickens when Miguel somehow is in the know of what actually happened between Ernest and Héctor and the causation of the latter's death. A twist aptly arrives just when the viewers start to get a hang of the whole picture about Miguel's genealogy, and the ensuing thrills-and-spills kickstarts like a roller-coaster with a cliff-hanger, then back to the world of the living, Miguel sings that heart-warming number of REMEMBER ME to facilitate a completely justified happy ending in both worlds.
Here, what reverberates universally and poignantly in every adult heart is the well-intentional message that our memories become the linchpin of those departed in another realm, which both projects a more propitious look on death itself and inculcates the traditional family value but without condescending into homily, believe it or not, even the most hardened cynics would involuntarily shed a tear or two during its finely honed process of emotional cleansing.
Visually polychromatic and aurally mellifluous (Anthony Gonzalez is a boy genius in voicing our little hero), vamped up with a miscellany of indigenous folklore staples, culture heritage and topographic features, COCO is heading to notch up that Oscar grail and emerges as another jewel in Pixar's ever-impressive crown, alas, one just cannot say the same to the cutesy Disney short OLAF'S FROZEN ADVENTURE, ill-fatedly affixed shy of a masterpiece could simply put the former in the shade.