The 2017 slate of big studio animated movies was rather dismal, which I think is going to lead to an easy win for Coco, the best of the batch by any measure, especially since some of the best indie animated films didn’t even score nominations. Coco (available to rent/buy on amazon or iTunes) is genuinely very good, if not really at Peak Pixar levels; it’s better than the sequels Pixar has churned out recently, like Finding Dory and Monsters U., just not at the standard set by films like Up or WALL-E or the Toy Story trilogy.
(I suppose this disclaimer is barely necessary at this point, but just in case: I work for ESPN, which is owned by Disney, which owns Pixar, which made Coco.)
The protagonist of Coco is not actually Coco, but Miguel, a young Mexican boy who wants nothing more in life than to be a musician, but whose great-great-grandfather left his wife and very young daughter, Coco, to pursue his dreams in music. That has made the family extremely bitter towards music, to the point where Miguel has to hide his records and his homemade guitar from his parents and relatives, especially his grandmother, who is basically Nurse Ratchet in abuelita form.
Of course, he gets caught, runs away, and ends up crossing over the bridge to the netherworld where the mostly-dead spirits of the recently deceased reside in relative luxury … as long as someone alive still remembers them. On the Day of the Dead, the spirits can come back to visit their relatives as long as someone has put up their pictures on their ofrendas. Miguel can get back to the land of the living, but wants to do it in a way that doesn’t require him to surrender his dreams of becoming a musician, which leads him to chase down the man he thinks is his deceased great-great-grandfather, the underworld-famous musician Ernesto de la Cruz. (Spoiler alert: It’s not him, and God help you if you didn’t see that one coming.) So Miguel has to learn some important lessons about family, sing a song or two, and eventually get back to the living while also restoring a lost link to his family’s past.
Coco looks great, as all Pixar movies do, although I think since Brave they’ve kind of run up against a barrier of animation quality – Pixar films have blown me away visually so many times in the past that there isn’t much left for them to impress me with. This film is colorful and bright and very appealing, especially the spirit animals of the netherworld, but it’s also what we’ve come to expect from this studio. The story itself is just so-so, although there are plenty of sight gags and a bunch of references that will sail over younger readers’ heads but entertain the parents. (Bonus points for getting my daughter to ask me who Frida Kahlo was.) The setup never really worked for me – the loving parents who are so hellbent on denying Miguel any kind of music, not just saying he can’t pursue it as a career, but proscribing it as even a hobby. His grandmother destroys his handmade guitar, which just does not gibe at all with the rest of her character; no matter how mad you get, you don’t obliterate something your child made.
The best Pixar movies all have intricate plots that drop threads early in the film only to tie them all back together near the end. There are no throwaways in movies like The Incredibles or Toy Story – every detail ends up mattering in a big way. Not only is it satisfying in the moment to see a script recall something from an hour earlier, but it adds to the feeling that these are deep, three-dimensional films to be considered on par with live-action movies. If anything, most live action films would be lucky to bring scripts of the density and sophistication of great Pixar films. Coco isn’t one of these; there’s a single plot strand, established early and handled linearly, without much more. Even the complex structure of the netherworld where the skeleton-souls reside felt too familiar, with shots of the great hall and the stadium both recalling similar settings from Harry Potter films.
In a better year, with a better slate of nominees, I don’t think Coco would be deserving of the Best Animated Feature Oscar it’s going to win. It’s the best of the five nominees, and it’s hard for any other studio to match the sheer quality of the CG animation that comes from Pixar. If you go against them on animation, it has to be to choose something novel like the hand-painted cels of Loving Vincent or the visual style of The Breadwinner. (Let’s not even talk about The Boss Baby.) Tim Grierson and Will Leitch put this at #14 on their ranking of all 19 Pixar feature films, which amounts to dropping it behind all the good ones and ahead of all the mediocre-or-less ones. I can’t disagree.
* I’ve seen all five Best Animated Short Film nominees just in the last 72 hours, as they were all available somewhere for free: “Garden Party,” “Lou,” and “Negative Space” were all on YouTube, although at the moment two are gone; “Dear Basketball” is on Go90; and “Revolting Rhymes” is on Netflix. Of those, ”Revolting Rhymes” would be my pick, as it’s inventive, looks fantastic, and manages to develop some characters … but it’s also two episodes of about 28 minutes each, which exceeds the category’s length threshold, so I don’t know if voters have to consider just one of the two parts. It’s based on a Roald Dahl book of rhymes where he reworks some classic fairy tales to add some macabre twists and change the endings, all told here by a Big Bad Wolf (voiced by Dominic West). My daughter and I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I think she’d vote for “Lou” instead. That Pixar short brings the items in a school playground lost & found to life to teach the class bully a lesson. It’s cute and sweet and probably gets the nod on animation quality.
“Negative Space” is a stop-motion piece from Germany about a young man who is remembering how his father taught him his rather scientific method of packing a suitcase to maximize use of the space therein. It’s just five minutes, and there’s a twist that I think you’ll probably see coming. “Garden Party” also has a twist, and the animation of various tropical frogs taking over an apparently abandoned mansion is cool … but there isn’t really a story here.
And then there’s “Dear Basketball,” which I’m worried will win because it involves Kobe Bryant, even though it is clearly the worst of the five. Bryant penned a letter essentially thanking basketball for the huge, positive influence it has had on his life, which is fine, but not munch of a story. The animation looks like charcoal drawings, which is appealing, but ultimately there is just no there here. If it’s not pointless, the point isn’t very sharp. And that’s without considering the fact that Bryant was accused of rape and chose to pay his accuser to make the charges go away – not someone the Academy should want on its stage anyway, not this year of all years. If this were a truly great short film, maybe there’d be an argument for honoring it anyway, but it’s just not.
I’d rank the shorts 1. Revolting Rhymes 2. Lou 3. Negative Space 5A. Garden Party 5B. Dear Basketball. I liked Negative Space quite a bit.
I guess I’m too much of a Pixar softy these days, because I thought Coco was brilliant and put it #5 on my list of best of the year.
I also really enjoyed Lou, though not as much as Piper, but I haven’t seen the others, unfortunately.
Hopefully I can actually watch the Oscars tomorrow as I’m currently without power thank to that damned storm.
Finding Dory was abysmal! horrible movie
i also liked Coco quiet a bit – you did not tear up at all? even my 7 year old did
I think the first episode is Revolting Rhymes is the nominated one; at least, that’s what was included when they showed the nominees in theaters. It was originally my pick, although the technical excellence of Garden Party – and the fact that just six people made it – and the fun way they anthromorphized them without losing their frogginess – won me over in the end. That’ll stick with me long after Revolting Rhymes has faded.
Also, I kind of think having Dominic West and Rose Leslie and several other major actors is cheating, like that live-action that had Jim Broadbent and Sally Hawkins a few years ago (The Phone Call).
Dear Basketball is hagiographic garbage, the sort of thing you’d see in preseason ads. Its nomination is a farce. The best unnominated one, from the ones included in the theater version, was Lost Property Office, which is definitely worth watching.
“The setup never really worked for me – the loving parents who are so hellbent on denying Miguel any kind of music, not just saying he can’t pursue it as a career, but proscribing it as even a hobby. His grandmother destroys his handmade guitar, which just does not gibe at all with the rest of her character; no matter how mad you get, you don’t obliterate something your child made.”
I haven’t seen the film, but I don’t think it’d bother me. People are complex. Good people sometimes do bad things. We’re capable of being motivated by multiple things… in this case love for a child AND incredible pain. One thing I loved about Moana was it explored this complexity… the controlling father wasn’t controlling because of Plot Point!, but because of his own trauma. The “villain” wasn’t just rotten but emerged from a place of hurt.
Maybe Coco doesn’t do this well but I don’t accept that a loving parent will never do somethign harmful to a child in a moment of pain or weakness. We’re human. We fail.