The Book of Life 2014
I bought this blu-ray on a great Black Friday sale, but never got around to watching it until it was available on Disney Plus in 4K and HDR. I am glad I waited because this movie is stunning visually, with amazing colors that had to have been enormously enhanced with HDR. The story is interesting, riffing on Mexico’s Day of the Dead tradition like Coco would a few years later. With sort of a Greek pedigree, underworld gods play with the lives of mortals, in this case three friends, two boys and a girl, betting their underworld kingdoms on who will eventually marry. It is an inventive construct, but undermined a little since it is a story told by a museum guide in New York City to bratty kids, and with pop songs thrown in as well as some distinctly non-Mexican stars in Channing Tatum, Ron Perlman, and Ice Cube. I still feel like more of it works than doesn’t. The main characters work well and have mostly strong support. While there are some big name voices involved, I didn’t recognize them until looking up the credits. The characters are highly stylized, made to look like wooden dolls, which seemed weird, but it does offer a unique style. Not as sentimental as Coco, it also avoids being just a by the numbers action story, though it does end in a big battle.
Written: 20 Sep 2021
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital