FOLK-ART FIESTA ‘The Book of Life’ might not be captivating, but it's an enjoyable, family-friendly 3D spectacle nonetheless definitely worth checking out, says Tim Robey
ššš THE BOOK OF LIFE. Director: Jorge R Gutiérrez. Starring the voices of: Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum, Ron Perlman, Danny Trejo, Christina Applegate, Ice Cube. Showing at: Hemingways. Reviewed by Tim Robey. THE best way to explain The Book of Life is with The Nightmare Before Christmas, the darkly clever 1993 animation that most people probably assume was directed by Tim Burton. In fact, the madly talented Henry Selick made that, with Burton producing, just as Jorge R Gutiérrez created this film under the aegis of Guillermo Del Toro.
Here we’re also straddling the threshold of life and death, with characters who regularly disappear to the underworld and pop back up; this time it’s Mexican folklore, specifically the Day of the Dead, which inspires the story and design.
We get an archetypal love triangle set in the distant past, with a soulful matador called Manolo (voiced by Diego Luna), and his childhood friend, the dashing, moustachioed Joaquin (Channing Tatum), vying for the affections of Maria (Zoe Saldana).
So far, so ordinary. The movie is in the odd position of springing to life when major characters die, plunging us down to the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten.
“What is it with Mexicans and death?”, ask some young museum visitors of their narrator/tour guide in the present-day framing device. Also, “We’re just kids!”, which gets a big laugh, even if it’s coming straight from the anxieties of the filmmakers about how far to push things.
Not to worry: death is a reversible, U-certificate process here, almost a game, with rival deities La Muerte and Xibalba placing bets on the outcome.
The characters look carved from wood, complete with whorls and bevelled edges, then transform, when dead, into the white-painted figures, with hollow eyes and skull motifs, we recognise from Mexico’s Halloween art.
They’re still safely on the cute side of unsettling. Almost all the film’s pleasures are a matter of 3D gawping, and they’re nothing to sniff at: the variety of stylised bulls Manolo must encounter in the ring, climaxing with a vast, fire-breathing dragon-bull hybrid that threatens his extinction, is especially enjoyable.
The movie is one giant, family-friendly folk-art fiesta, and more that, really, than a saga whose ins and outs wildly captivate or make us care.
You won’t be on the edge of your seat, in other words – but lolling back.