Coco 2017
Pixar’s last original movie (not counting the sequel, Cars 3) was one of their best, Inside Out, so I had high hopes for Coco despite an unimpressive preview short featuring a dog stealing the bone of a skeleton. The dog is in Coco but that sequence is not. The dog is maybe a little too silly or the rest of Coco just isn’t silly enough. There are no big laughs and not a whole lot of action in this movie. Instead it is a nice look at Mexico’s traditional “Day of the Dead” of honoring ancestors. And there is what turns out to be a very sweet story about music and family. There are twists and turns, but a lot of them are kind of obvious and the movie drags a bit as we wait for a couple of the reveals we know are coming (though one big one caught me by surprise). That isn’t what you want in a Pixar movie.
The animation is good, some things being very lifelike, but the characters and buildings intentionally more like a cartoon. The colors are bright in this afterworld instead of gray and muted. One problem with all the skeleton people is their faces can’t be as expressive. Both the living and dead families are each kind of big so nobody gets a lot of development except a couple of the main characters.
Another issue is there are no big name voice actors since everyone is Latino. The Day of the Dead tradition is a great way to introduce an audience to something new, but also kind of hard to relate to. Family and music are more universal, but the trappings of the Day of the Dead are a challenge and there is a lot to cover (plus a bunch of made up rules for the plot), even though it is handled pretty well.
For the first couple of weeks of the release of the movie, a Disney (not Pixar) short was shown prior to the feature called “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure.” Whether Disney stuck to their “limited engagement” as planned or whether too many people weren’t happy with the short, by the time I watched the movie there was no opening short at all. At home afterwards I found out ABC had just broadcast it the night before and I had missed it, but I was happy to find it free on ABC On Demand. Despite the same main characters as Frozen and some new songs, the short is weak and longer than a typical Pixar short, weighing in at 21 minutes (perfect for a half hour TV show with commercials). Not sure a Disney Christmas movie and a Pixar Day of the Dead movie belonged together anyway, or why they would release Coco at Thanksgiving instead of Halloween.
On the whole this does not seem like one of the better Pixar movies, but if you are patient with it there is a nice story about the importance of living and dead family, good music, good visuals, and an introduction to a tradition most of us know little about.
Update: I wound up buying the Blu-ray of the movie even though this was not one of my favorite Pixar movies. I just watched it again and I feel pretty much the same way, though I was able to concentrate more on the characters instead of the plot since I knew what was going to happen. There are still way too many characters and too much exposition about the family’s history and the Day of the Dead which makes the first half of the movie kind of clunky. But it is still enjoyable. One nice thing about the Blu-ray is they have a lot of segments about making the movie, particularly how they made an incredible effort to capture authentic Mexican culture in a respectful way, starting with sending the staff to Mexico to visit families and small towns, having a panel of Pixar employees with Mexican family to give ideas and flesh out the characters, and bringing in tons of people to get details of clothing and music just right. This is political correctness executed on a masterful level. The movie became the biggest blockbuster in Mexican history (released there weeks before it was in the United States), so I think it was well received.
The extras also cover some of the production stuff like the city where all of the dead people live, arranged in giant towers that start with Aztec pyramids and developing into more modern housing as you work your way up. They also talk about the difficulty of getting clothes to look right on skeletons and getting layered victorian era clothes to move and dance along with people wearing them. Definitely worth watching, with some extras included on a bonus Blu-ray disk.
Written: 15 Dec 2017
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital