Is Pixar's 'Coco' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Say
In recent years Pixar has become a bit more of a hit or miss studio, but even its misses have been tolerable — for "Coco," after a disgraceful move where Disney tried to copyright "Día de los Muertos" for the movie's title, a tolerable miss won't be enough. Does the first Pixar film to star a non-white human protagonist get the benefit of the studio's best qualities, or have expectant audiences been handed a forgettable film? Here's what the reviews are saying:
The Story Is One Part Epic Quest, One Part 'Back To The Future'
The story's 12-year-old protagonist, Miguel Rivera, is an aspiring guitarist with a song in his heart and stardom on his mind. But to realize his destiny he must defy the wishes of his close-knit Mexican family, which, for reasons stemming from a long-ago ancestral scandal, has forbidden him from enjoying or pursuing music.
Miguel sneaks into Ernesto de la Cruz's mausoleum on Día de Muertos and steals the star's prized guitar, unleashing a curse that forces him to travel to the Land of the Dead, where Miguel must seek his family's forgiveness, as well as their blessing, before being allowed to return home — an Orpheus-like katabasis (as such epic journeys are called) in which he must travel the underworld and back to set things right.
[Variety]
The machinations that get Miguel to the other side are too complicated to explain in a review, though they're comprehensible as you watch the movie. Suffice to say that Miguel gets there, teams up with a melancholy goofball named Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal), and has to pose as one of the dead with the aid of skeletal facepaint, but that (like Marty McFly returning to the 1950s to make sure his mom ends up with his dad in "Future") the longer Miguel stays on the other side, the more likely he is to end up actually dead.
'Coco' Is Colorful And Richly Realized, With Nods To Greats In Animation And In Mexican Pop Culture
It's eye-popping, a richly layered underworld of Mayan architecture, of plazas and bell towers outlined in Christmas lights. Imagine if Mexico City somehow sprawled upward, part Blade Runner and part ofrenda altar, and then was populated entirely with the most high-spirited bone-folks since Walt Disney's 1929 short "The Skeleton Dance."
Among other things, it features the studio's most extensive use of realistic camerawork, with a convincingly simulated handheld camera sometimes peering over Miguel's shoulder as he shoves his way through a crowded, wondrously lit afterlife that doubles as an elaborate homage to Mexican popular culture and art. (Frida Kahlo, voiced by Natalia Cordova-Buckley, gets some of the movie's weirdest and most memorable gags.)
Coco is as indebted to Ratatouille as it is to Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, but the combination of sensibilities and the colorful, semi-spooky milieu of the afterlife realm where most of the film is set is not at all unwelcome.
[Vulture]
The Cast Is Full Of Well-Known Latin-American Actors
The film's stable of voice actors reads like a Who's Who of Latin-American talent: the ensemble includes Edward James Olmos, Alfonso Arau, Ana Ofelia Murguia, Alanna Ubach and, in a small role, to my surprise and astonishment, playwright Octavio Solis, who was one of my teachers in high school back in Dallas.
'Coco' Makes Its Cultural Themes Agreeable To All, Even Where That Undercuts Some Savvy Commentary
The cultural vibe of "Coco" is inclusive rather than exoticizing, pre-empting inevitable concerns about authenticity and appropriation with the mixture of charm and sensitivity that has become something of a 21st-century Disney hallmark. Here, the importance of family — the multigenerational household that sustains and constrains the hero — is both specific and universal.
Just as Inside Out imagined the mystery of personality along the lines of an office team-building exercise, Coco posits that the bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead is dominated by a border-crossing station, complete with customs officials and facial recognition software[…] You might expect that a movie set in Mexico and starring Mexican characters and committed to Mexican folklore might find something to say about such imagery, or at least demonstrate that the creators have thought through the implications. Instead, it's just a glib joke.
Like Recent Pixar Films, It Can Feel A Little Formulaic
It is an alternately smooth and strenuous Pixarian weave of bright colors, spirited chatter and inventive action, prepared and tested in accordance with the highest factory standards.
By this point, the Pixar machine has gotten so efficient that watching its movies can feel less like hearing a good story than sitting in on a well-polished pitch meeting. In "Coco" — which is named after Miguel's oldest living relative, exquisitely rendered as a damaged soul wrapped in wrinkles — there's a clockwork sense of what every character, detail and scene is doing (the mariachi band with which Miguel performs reappears later to help him sneak into Ernesto's compound, etc.), giving the film an almost boilerplate efficiency right up until the big confrontation between Miguel and his idol, which doesn't go at all how one might think.
[Variety]
Sometimes watching a Pixar movie is like loading up a video game where, after ten seconds spent gaping at the open world, you have to buckle down and perform some incidental quests.
The Music Isn't Likely To Find 'Frozen'-Level Success
[The] story's sincere emotional resolution earns the sobs it's sure to inspire, inevitably bringing Ernesto's catchy "Remember Me" back around in a fresh context (if only the song itself were more worthy of remembering).
[Variety]
["Coco"] bounces along to the beat of a Michael Giacchino score, several traditional Mexican songs and a few original tunes that never run the risk of burrowing into your mind. (The most significant one, ironically, is titled "Remember Me.")
Most Places Didn't Think To Have A Latino Writer Review The Movie, So One Site Had Five Do It
The vibrantly colorful animated feature that draws on Día de Muertos celebrations could easily have gone askew, and Latino audiences are unforgiving. But with Coco, there is absolutely no cause for concern. With the nods to the tres raizes (three roots) of Latino culture – indigenous, Spanish, and African – Pixar crafted a gorgeously drawn homage that rings true. While non-Mexicans may miss many of these references, they won't enjoy it any less.
With Coco, Pixar Animation Studios' take on the traditional Mexican celebration Día de Muertos, audiences are given a film that will become the standard-bearer of a positive example of what the Latino experience can look like on the big screen for years to come. Don't think Coco is a film that was created merely to placate Latino moviegoers. These smartly written, emotionally driven characters are what Latino audiences should expect going forward. Salsa-dancing, nacho-eating, lucha libre mask-wearing stereotypes never cut it before, and Coco proves why that representation should never be an option again if studios hope to capture authenticity in its storytelling.
The movie's message about family, forgiveness, and unconditional love is poignant and profound, flying in the face of presidential proclamations about rapists, murderers and drug traffickers. Enchanting and dazzling, Coco is a resplendent love letter to Mexico.
These reviews and more can be found in-full at Remezcla.
TL;DR
One might argue that Coco could stand to be weirder and more self-indulgent; the alternate reality it creates is entertaining and expansive. But then it wouldn't be a Pixar film. It is impeccable, time-tested craftsmanship, not experimentation, that drives Coco, both in its most familiar beats and in its most moving moments.
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