Reviewers rave about Pixar’s Coco
Judging by the earliest returns, Pixar might well have a winning film on its hands this Thanksgiving.
Coco, the studio’s new film, which centres on a boy’s musical journey within Mexico’s Day of the Dead/Dia de Muertos rituals and customs, has the first wave of top reviewers waxing mostly positive, especially glowing over the effects (naturally), the emotion (to be expected) and what the movie represents in terms of diversity.
This is the 19th Pixar film, but the first to feature multiple characters of colour in prominent roles.
Coco, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, is also reassuringly textured in how it appropriates cultural symbols and folklore, critics say.
The film (opening Nov. 22) delivers “a universal message about family bonds while adhering to folkloric traditions free of the watering down or whitewashing that have often typified Americanized appropriations of cultural heritage,” writes Michael Rechtshaffen for the Hollywood Reporter.
Amid recent casting controversies involving white actors in such comics adaptations as Doctor Strange and Ghost in the Shell, THR also notes that “a peerless voice cast (is) populated almost entirely by Mexican and Latino actors.”
Variety’s Peter Debruge, too, lauds Coco’s innovation on the diversity front as it seriously deals “with the deficit of non-white characters in (Pixar) films” — even “while colouring comfortably within the lines on practically everything else.”
The Hollywood Reporter also praises aspects of the film that have become Pixar hallmarks, citing “a richly woven tapestry of comprehensively researched storytelling, fully dimensional characters, clever touches both tender and amusingly macabre and vivid, beautifully textured visuals.”
That said, Pixar’s recent Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur weren’t hailed as worthy of cracking the studio’s top creative tier. But THR calls Coco Pixar’s “most original effort since 2015’s Inside Out.”
The Wrap’s Robert Abele echoes the return to form, writing: “The animation juggernaut has once more shown how its storytelling acumen and visual splendours are still the surest dance partners in movies today.”
The Wrap also notes a different sort of creative breakthrough within this film: “It’s the most human-populated story the studio has yet told, even if many of those humans are in exaggerated skeletal form.”