Review of Coco (2017) by Alex G — 02 Sep 2018

In Coco, everything is about the importance of family. So what does family offer us in this film: arrogance, pettiness, and control issues. Every family member in this movie is out for themselves and willing to sabotage others to further some sort of vendetta with another family member they have grown out of touch with.

The only reason this story happens--on the living and dead side--is because this kid's elder is an asshole who won't listen to reason. On the living side, we are somehow supposed to believe that Coco--who loves her dad, has evidence of his true success, and had been corresponding with him before his death--never passed on that message to her daughter.

So her daughter rages on and on about what has been taken from them by music, but somehow never talked to her mother about it? And then *magic* music cures the family and Coco's memory. On the dead side of things, the family member forcing the "no music or I let you die" rule actually loves music and only allows the kid to follow his dreams because she is forced to sing in front of a crowd.

..are you shitting me? And she's been living in the same city as the person she has a grudge against, but they never resolved their issues to discover the truth in all these hundred-ish years since? The way the film keeps the truth about who the father is from the boy and audience is SO forced and on the nose.

The movie is both incredibly predictable and shockingly tiny in scope.