Review of Coco (2017) by Chesterftof — 20 Jan 2018

After watching the trailers for Coco, I wasn’t sold. I didn’t laugh at any of the jokes, nor did I find any of the characters endearing enough to justify dedicating almost two hours of my life to. Regardless, I saw it anyway; I’ve been attempting to see films I thought I won’t enjoy recently, but yet again, I’ve been surprised.

I will quickly say that I don’t think Coco is a masterpiece. I’m not entirely convinced it’s even ‘great’. I still enjoyed it, however, and that’s good enough for me.

The main talking point for the film seems to be the visuals, and for the most part, I can understand why. It’s certainly a very pretty film. You can see how much time and care went into each frame, and I can’t even comprehend being one of the animators on a project like this. With this said, however, I don’t feel I witnessed anything revolutionary in terms of animation. While my memory might be wrong, I believe this film to be on a similar level to Moana. That’s definitely not a negative; Moana’s probably my favourite animated film in recent memory, primarily due to it’s animation.

The brilliant visuals do bring a flaw, however. With all of the wondrous colours assaulting your vision, it comes full circle, and ceases to be impressive after a while. There is simply too much colour for me to enjoy the film as a whole. I’ll use a scene from Rogue One as an example. Regardless of your thoughts on the film, one of the final scenes featuring a certain Sith Lord was generally considered to be brilliant, at least amongst fans. The absence of colour, followed by the jarringly bright crimson adds to the scene, and doesn’t simply exist to be pretty to look at. Sometimes, less is more.

The soundtrack was rather mixed, too. Parts were very fitting, and added to the scene. Other parts, however, sounded like generic Disney filler that could have been pasted into any other film and work just as well.

Since the film features music, primarily guitars, rather prominently, I also found myself confused at moments; I heard somebody playing the guitar, but the character actually holding it wasn’t doing anything. It took me a few moments to realise it was actually the scoring.

Additionally, while this movie is obviously aimed for the family, I found many of the plot-points rather obvious. It intentionally makes it’s plot unnecessarily complicated in an attempt to fool you, but if you understand basic storytelling tropes, you’ll pick up on the plot rather promptly, even if the film changes specific elements just to surprise a few people. The film feels as though it’s trying to be surprising, and sad, and funny, rather than letting it’s scenes speak for themselves. Much of it feels forced, at least to me.

Many of the characters also weren’t particularly likeable. The main character, Miguel, comes across as a legitimately bad person many times in this film, and everyone else doesn’t fare much better. Obviously, the villain is cruel, but also those who we’re supposed to like are selfish and unpleasant. I thought that at the end perhaps they’d apologise and acknowledge their wrongdoings, but it never happens. Only Miguel has to change himself in this film, and he still gets everything he wants in the end anyway.

Overall, this film actually struggles to excel in specific areas. It’s very serviceable, with bits dipping below average, and others rising above. Thankfully, the pros manage to outweigh the cons, making Coco an enjoyable film, regardless of how simple it’s message is. I’ll give it a shaky 7/10, though if you enjoy all other Disney films, or the general aesthetic of the movie, you’ll most likely love this one.