Today's Review: Coco

I'm a pretty big Pixar fan, so obviously I booked up Coco tickets as soon as the preview weekend came around. It's their first original movie in two years, after the pretty good The Good Dinosaur and the quite sublime Inside Out, which both came out in 2015. We've had some sequels since then in the shape of Finding Dory and Cars 3, but I find Pixar are at their best when the explore new territory. Coco follows Miguel, a young boy in Mexico who finds himself transported to the land of the dead during the Day Of The Dead festival. He only has until sunrise to return to the human realm, or else he'll turn into a skeleton himself. Like in Back To The Future, but with bones instead of nothing. So he has to enlist the help of his no-longer-living family members who now dwell in this mystical land, and a crazy adventure begins.

Let's get this out of the way first, this movie is absolutely beautiful. The Day Of The Dead theme is always a reason to get creative with patterns and colours, but Coco really kicks it up a notch. It's a celebration of life and colour, so many wonderful shades on top of perfectly animated characters. Comparing the human models from Toy Story to now, it's evident to see how finely Pixar have honed their craft. The characters themselves are vibrant too, distinct personalities and quirks that play very well off each other, and all the voice actors do a great job at portraying what would essentially be a pile of bones without that Pixar touch.

The story is... okay. It's not quite as polished and clever as some of the Pixar classics, but it has a few twists and turns along the way. It also leaves room for a lot of humour throughout, and it certainly got a few chuckles from me. The main plot may seem a little generic, but at its heart Coco is a film about family, and those themes are running very strongly all the way through, a great message supported with some fantastic songs. I'm sure the original song Oscar is coming your way, guys. So while this may not be Pixar's finest, it's a very good quality movie that looks fantastic and is pretty much a joy to watch. Hopefully we won't have too many sequels between this and the next original movie, although I am looking forward to The Incredibles 2...

My rating: 4/5