Coco

I’ve been worried about Pixar for a while. After an unprecedented fifteen year, eleven movie stretch of filmmaking excellence, the computer animation juggernaut hit a rough patch. Cars 2 ushered in an era of meh sequels and only pretty good originals. Even films from this period that I love like Brave and Inside Out somehow didn’t have the same firing-on-all-cylinders magic of the Toy Story trilogy, The Incredibles, Wall-E, or Ratatouille. However, when I saw the first trailers for Pixar’s latest, Coco, I was more troubled than ever. It seemed that the company had left the sad territory of retread sequels and entered into full-on plagiarism. 

 At least based on the trailers, Coco appeared to be a stone cold rip off of 2014’s The Book of Life. The Book of Life is also a computer-animated story of a young Mexican man who wants to be a musician but the tradition of his family business keeps him from realizing this dream. Through the course of his struggles, the young man passes over to the land of the dead where everyone is a skeleton and lives in an ornate, fantastic cityscape. Not to ruin things, but in the end, the young man triumphs and he returns to the land of the living. His family relents, and he’s able to follow his dream and be a musician.

If you saw the initial trailers for Coco, you probably understand why I was so concerned. It literally presented like a souped-up version of the exact same story.

However, I am happy to say that appearances were deceiving. Of course, there are surface similarities between the two films, but the tone, approach, and story are actually very different. And while I liked The Book of Life, I loved Coco.

The animation alone sets the newer film apart from the older one. The technology and technique of computer animation seems to experience dramatic leaps between each Pixar film, and Coco is definitely the highpoint so far. One difficult thing for computer animators to pull off is depth of field. Despite photorealistic rendering, many CGI images look flat. But Coco’s depictions of everything from the plaza of a small Mexican village to a sprawling customs office in the Land of the Dead (obviously based on Los Angeles’s famous Bradbury building, by the way), you feel actual layers of depth. It’s a new level of realism and immersion. Combined with the ingenious production design, particularly of the Land of the Dead, the film is a first-rate visual pleasure.

But of course, no one is really moved by technological advancement unless it’s in the service of something human, and the themes of Coco, while very culturally specific, are universal. The film is not just some general, pro-family message but rather it’s specifically about the importance of remembering and passing on heritage, of making sure our children know about our parents, who they were and what they cared about and struggled with. It’s also about the things that bind families together – work, stories, food, and music. One of the final scenes features the protagonist, Miguel, singing a song of comfort and love to his ancient and barely present great grandmother, Coco. The moment when the old woman opens her eyes and looks at her great grandson in recognition, joy, and gratitude is a wonder of animation, voicework, writing, and sentiment. 

The whole film is a success, and there isn’t a wrong note in it. The Book of Life was a lighthearted, cleverly designed jukebox musical that entertains my eight year old and is a pleasant way for a parent to spend 95 minutes. There are similarities between the two films, but ultimately Coco is so much more resonant, beautiful, and accomplished. Even though the two films take place in the same country, it’s as though they’re from different universes. If any film can mark Pixar’s reemergence as makers of great, original films, Coco is it.