Coco review: An eye-popping Day of the Dead adventure

Dead good: Pixar's Coco is an eye-popping tale set in Mexico
Charlotte O'Sullivan19 January 2018

I like to think the Pixar team is a fan of an olde English poem called The Dream of the Rood (the crucifixion story, told from the point of view of the cross). Giving a voice to the stiff, static or mute, it’s what the Pixar gang does best (you know about the brave toys; here, we’re seduced by skeletons). How fitting. This global brand, forever reminding us to rescue old pals from the rubbish bin of history, doesn’t so much give birth to ideas as resurrect them.

Their latest CGI epic revolves around Mexico’s Day of the Dead and is funny, irreverent and eye-popping. It will also make you want to cry at least once but possibly as many as three times. It’s orgasmically sad.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the title, picture a senile old woman with a hairy chin. Since the Nineties Disney has given us many strong, wonderful matriarchs (including Grandmother Willow, Mama Odie and Gramma Tala). But their chins are smooth, because it’s an unwritten rule that only evil or grotesque females flaunt gender-blurring whiskers. Who cares? The film-makers do. In Mexico a “Coco” is a hairy monster who gobbles up naughty kids. With great subtlety, director Lee Unkrich is attempting to rewire our brains. He’s made a bugbear into the star of the show.

Twelve-year-old Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) wants to be a musician. Thanks, however, to the stern edicts of his great-great-grandmother, Imelda, he’s forced to rob a grave to get his hands on a guitar, which in turns leads to him being stuck in the underworld. There he not only meets Imelda (Alanna Ubach), but his idol, musician/film-star Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), along with a wastrel, Hector (Gael García Bernal, fab).

Once in the land of the dead, the film blossoms. Frida Kahlo’s skeleton, organising a spectacular stage show, frets about the symbolism of a weeping cactus (“Too obvious?”). A rendition of earthy, folk myth La Llorona is to die for.

Unusually for a Pixar project, music dominates the proceedings, but never at the expense of the script. And how satisfying that Miguel is able to solve the central mystery, because he’s watched so many of Ernesto’s movies. Film geeks rule! So do goths and emos! (Miguel increasingly looks like Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance).

In fact, old and young will be touched by an ode to memory that often resembles Beetlejuice, fuelled by ayahuasca. Prepare to have your mind broken and your heart blown.

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