Not as good as "Up," but better than "Cars" 1, 2, or 3

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2017)

Pixar story about a young boy who wants nothing more than to be a musician, except that his shoemaker family has forbidden music due to the boy's great great grandfather abandoning the family long ago to pursue a life as a musician (Coco is the boy's very elderly great grandmother, and daughter of the shunned musician). The film takes place during Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday where families remember and celebrate their deceased relatives, and when the film's hero, Miguel, discovers his runaway relative is actually the famous star of music and film, Ernesto de la Cruz (voice by Benjamin Bratt), he sets out to seize his moment by entering a music contest, only to find himself transported to the colorful and vibrant land of the dead. There he find a world populated by skeletal deceased relatives waiting to be remembered by their families so they can return to the world of the living to once again be with their descendants and loved ones. Miguel must find a way back to the world of the living before the end of the night, but that's not as easy as he expects when he discovers his relatives in the land of the dead also continue to hold music in contempt and refuse to help unless he renounces music. But wait! Ernesto de la Cruz is a relative and a musician, but he's just as famous in death as he was in life, so for Miguel to get to de la Cruz is no easy task. Miguel is aided on his quest by Héctor, a down-on-his-luck character who claims to know de la Cruz, but who is beginning to fade away from this world because his family no longer remembers him. Without spoiling any plot points, it's the themes of family and being remembered by your children and descendants that tugs at the heart strings and is at the core of the film. Pixar does sentiment better than anyone (I still get weepy just thinking of Bing Bong's farewell scene from "Inside Out"), where it's rarely maudlin or saccharine, and is typically genuine and easily identifiable. The idea of being forgotten by your family is one that will hit home for parents watching the film, and the themes around family connections will be identifiable for both kids and adults. Setting the story aside for a second, I haven't even mentioned the film's lively music ("Remember Me" is a real ear-worm), it's clever sense of humor (Miguel's street dog friend steals most every scene he's in), and the film's eye-popping visuals. It's also very cool for a major studio film to not feature a single anglo character and to instead feature a characters outside the dominant culture of the United State. My main complaint about the film is it's over reliance on plot devices and episodic adventures that were rather forced and relied once too often on coincidence, but I'm sure this will only annoy adults and the kids won't even notice. Overall, "Coco" is a solid entry in the Pixar canon of films, and athough it's not quite up to "Monsters Inc." "Up" or "Toy Story 3" standards of greatness, it's still far better than any of the "Cars" movies.