Review of Coco (2017) by Quillhawthorn — 18 Dec 2017

*NOTE: I would highly encourage that parents/guardians consider the age and maturity of their children before attending. Coco deals with themes of death and depicts characters dying. Kids 7+ should generally be fine.

1. The animation is beyond what Pixar has been achieving recently. For some reason, they seemed to really not want to settle for anything less than perfect with Coco. Unlike Disney's older, earlier use of CGI where they'd achieve a large background or hundreds of characters in the distance by cloning the same character over and over like the armies in Mulan, Disney had 2D artists meticulously detail every single building in the background. It was similar to Hayao Miyazaki's use of highly detailed background mixed with simple characters in the foreground.

2. I think I'd give it a 7 actually, I think the plot had a bit of fat that could have been trimmed and as another reviewer mentioned, it lacks the classic constantly near-perfect Pixar humor, but I'm bumping up the rating slightly because some reviews are giving it a zero because using a handful of Spanish words and referencing South American and Spanish culture is now an "SJW liberal agenda." The film is just a cute Day of the Dead story.

3. The character design is really good. They use shape language and costume really well, successfully designing characters that look exactly like their personalities.

4. I had that feeling of being slightly ahead of the plot but that's alright in a children's film, it wasn't entirely predictable or boring.

5. I wouldn't personally call the film a musical. There are characters who perform music and sing, but only in realistic ways. The songs are pretty enjoyable. I feel like it could have used an extra lighthearted or pick-me-up song because the central song of the story, Remember Me, was a little sad although also the best song in the film.

6. Coco's message is one we've seen a lot from Disney and Pixar. Despite it not being a very original moral, they managed to present it in a pretty original way.

7. The best thing I can say is that I went into this film with no knowledge of it. Having been burned a lot by a couple bad titles recently, I was expecting nothing good. It blindsided me by being memorable and surprisingly heartfelt.