Kaylee Brewster
Staff picks
Three-and-a-half out of four
The only thing you’ll need to bring to enjoy “Coco” is your wonder, love for music and a box of tissues.
“Coco” tells the story of Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), a wanna-be musician despite his family’s objections. When Miguel accidentally finds himself in the land of the dead, he has to find a way back home before sunrise or he’ll never return to the land of the living and his family.
Despite the seemingly grisly premise, there is nothing in “Coco” that makes it seem haunting. Those in the land of the dead, seen as skeletons, are people. They smile and laugh because they are family, and that’s what “Coco” is really about.
The heartbeat of Coco is the family that has come before us and the family we will leave behind — the legacies and love that are passed from generation to generation. There’s nothing scary about that.
Pixar continues to raise the bar for animation in “Coco” with unique characters and an impressively intricate city of the dead that seems to extend for miles into the screen.
Watching Miguel’s interactions with his family, both dead and alive, I thought of my own family, and that’s when the water works began (I noticed others in the theater wiping their eyes, too). That is what makes “Coco” really succeed — how it portrays family as something special, something everyone can relate to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aoS52EX16g
