Pixar's 'Coco' a brightly colored tale of joyous bromides
“Coco” - ★ ★ ★
The idea that a family would ban all music for generations because a musician member of their clan once walked out on his wife and child seems like a thin premise for dramatic conflict.
Yet, “Coco” makes it work, more or less, in the service of recycling familiar family film bromides such as “Follow your dreams!” “Listen to your heart!” and “Family first!”
“Coco” marks the 19th animated feature from Pixar Films. It ranks slightly higher than the popular “Cars” trilogy, and is only mildly disappointing when compared to Pixar's inventive “Toy Story” comedies or “Inside Out.”
Significantly, “Coco” marks the first Pixar production with a nonwhite cast of characters in a setting that uses Mexico's Día de los Muertos.
A cute 12-year-old lad named Miguel Rivera (Anthony Gonzalez) wants to be a guitar-playing singing star like his all-time hero, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), a dashing figure comically crushed under a giant bell, leaving behind old movies and a cache of popular songs.
When Miguel's alarmed family discovers he's been keeping a secret musical stash, which prompts his abuelita (or granny, played by Renee Victor) to gleefully destroy his favorite guitar, an angry Miguel responds by breaking into Ernesto de la Cruz's mausoleum and stealing the singer's famous white guitar.
“Coco” finally gets interesting the moment Miguel strikes the guitar strings. Supernatural forces transport him into the Land of the Dead where he must set things right, and earn forgiveness from his family and skeletal ancestors if he expects to return to the land of the living.
Miguel gets a sidekick - a floppy, flailing-tongued dog named Dante, a canine that easily crosses between the two worlds. A skeletal con artist named Hector (Gael García Bernal) offers to help Miguel, if he will post Hector's photo in the living world and enable him to cross over to see his daughter once more.
Slow in spots and overloaded with decapitation gags, “Coco” doesn't feel burdened with originality (Jorge Gutierrez's 2014 animated feature “The Book of Life” explored the Mexican underworld with similar visual designs).
But it packs a couple of “didn't see that coming” moments, and closes with an obligatory family reunion emanating such joyous emotion, its deficiencies earn our forgiveness as well.
<b>Starring:</b> Anthony Gonzalez, Benjamin Bratt, Gael García Bernal, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor
<b>Directed by:</b> Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
<b>Other:</b> A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG. 105 minutes