‘Coco’ looks great and feels even better
Pixar’s latest animated marvel is a visual feast that celebrates family bonds
Pixar is the like the Golden State Warriors of animated studios.
Like the basketball world champions, Pixar is an East Bay powerhouse that knows how to execute key plays with creative and technical ingenuity and deliver slamdunks (not counting “Cars 2”).
For its 19th feature, Pixar cooks up one of its best animated works, a holiday-appropriate visual feast showcasing and celebrating Mexican culture and family.
In telling this Day of the Dead-inspired tale, the Emeryville-based studio takes a needed narrative step forward in diversity, venturing away from the lily-whiteness dominating so many other animated features and focusing on a family from Mexico. At the same time, “Coco” stresses the importance of pursuing your dreams, even if they are not shared by your family members, even as it reminds us that family ties and obligations are paramount in life.
It makes for another strong message from a studio that has delivered plenty of them, from addressing the dangers of a sedentary culture (“WALL-E”), the suffocating effect of class consciousness (“Ratatouille”) and the need to embrace all emotions, from happiness to sadness (“Inside Out”).
As in all Pixar films, the animation is firstrate and cutting edge, with images so realistic that even wisps of hair and minor eye movements can enhance who the characters are and how their thoughts and actions play out.
The story is simple yet timeless, with “Coco” set just before a Dia de los Muertos celebration in the small, old-school village of Santa Cecilia (perfectly realized) as well as the magical realm of the afterlife. Each locale is given equal weight, but it’s when “Coco” barrels into the fantastic afterlife that the animation is cranked up to awe-inspiring levels.
“Coco” is told through the eyes of 12-year-old Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), an inquisitive boy in love with music. Unfortunately, the family biz happens to be shoemaking. His relatives hate music and have banished it from being played, for reasons that are central to the story line and which focus on the specter of a greatgreat-grandad, who was a musician.
Miguel longs to play music and enters a contest. That doesn’t sit well with Grandmother Abuelita (Renee Victor), who smashes his guitar before the big show. This prompts Miguel to visit the crypt of the legendary local singer/performer Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). As he tries to swipe the guitar in the crypt, he unwittingly lands in the Land of the Dead. There he meets up with relatives and makes unexpected connections to his heritage, while befriending Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal), who dreams of visiting the Land of the Living on Dia de los Muertos but is unable to do so because he is all but forgotten.
The Land of the Dead evolves as a Richard Scarry extravaganza of fantasy animation and director and co-screenwriter Lee Unkrich (“Toy Story 3”) and co-screenwriter Adrian Molina have a heyday with it. (Many of my favorite scenes involve the scrappy family dog Dante, with its wickedly long and expres--
sive tongue.)
All of that eye candy is impressive, but the best moments in “Coco” are the less splendiferous, more solemn segments — especially the loving exchanges between Miguel and his great-grandmother Mama Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia), when the Pixar magic truly unfolds and our tear ducts get a good workout.
Pixar knows how to deliver a Thor hammer swipe of animated might, but the studio is at its absolute best portraying human, intimate moments. Fortunately, “Coco” has many of them.