Review of The Book of Life (2014) by Sassyquatch — 16 Jan 2017

The Book of Life achieves the goal of being entertaining. The classic love triangle is given Grecian style with the addition of two meddling mythological creatures and a journey into the land of the dead. The classic tale of childhood love maturing into adulthood carries with it a natural charm and you find yourself actually rooting for the main character. Combine that with the well executed animation and on cue humor and you get a genuinely endearing little film.

Its weakness lies in its inability to structure plot. The climax didn't feel to climactic because it didn't follow from most of the sequences of events following up to it. In the same way, much of the movie didn't really know how to build a cohesive series of events, as the hero's time spent in the actual land of the dead was somewhat minimal. Exposition might have been carried on somewhat too long compared to other moments in the movie that could have deserved time in the spotlight. All in all, the movie really worked like a charm to entertain me because it had incredibly endearing and intriguing elements, but its strength as an actual movie is put into question by its weak plot structure.