What a masterpiece. This movie has my heart now, and I don’t want it back.
‘Coco’ started the tale after Olaf’s Adventure – for all of you who want to see more of Frozen, go see Coco – and we were introduced to the Rivera family: it began with a happy couple and their daughter Coco. They were happy together, until differences and priorities separated them. The husband loved music, so much that one day he left his family and never came back. The wife, heartbroken and abandoned, then shut music out of her life for good, and learned to support herself and Coco by making shoes.
And the shoe making business continued on, passed down from one generation to another, as well as the hatred towards music, until we finally got to meet our protagonist, Miguel.
Miguel was a cheerful kid who was never into his shoemaking family business.
Unlike his music hating family, Miguel loved music. It was his greatest passion and his happiness; however, it was impossible for Miguel to be a musician, given the fact that his family would stop at nothing to stop him.
One day, following the motto of his idol, the greatest musician of all time Ernesto de la Cruz, Miguel decided to join a talent show. That was going to happen for Miguel, until he stumbled upon the torn up picture of his great great grandparents – with the face torn out of the picture – and discovered that the guitar his faceless papa held in the picture was the same guitar that Ernesto de la Cruz had. Miguel confronted his family about them being Ernesto de la Cruz’s grandchild and great greandchildren, and it resulted in his angry Abuela smashing his only, handmade guitar.
Hurt by his family’s hatred towards his passion, Miguel stormed out of the family ground and left for the talent show. However, without a guitar he could not participate, and Miguel decided it would be okay for him to break into Ernesto’s memorial and steal his great great grandpa’s famous guitar. Or “borrow” according to him.
Unfortunately, everything took place on dia de los muertos; Miguel accidentally got himself pulled into the afterlife, and he could only return to the living if he got a blessing from a family member in the dead to go back.
But when his great great grandmother refused to send him back without the “never play music again” rule, Miguel took it into his hands to go find Ernesto de la Cruz for his blessing.
This movie broke my heart in one scene, and I hated it for it. Coco was old and dying in this movie, and she started forgetting everything and everyone around her. And yet, even in her old age, she still remembered her late father and waited for him to come home.
Of course, to see her father come back in the form of young Miguel’s passion for music killed me, and everyone else in the theater I swear. Plus, Coco and her daughter look just like my own abuela, and it just made it all the sadder for me. So much. Feels.
This movie is very well written, and I love the relationships built among the characters. It’s very family oriented, and anyone of any age can enjoy this. It has strong messages for the audience, and they were executed well.
The illustrations, the settings, were ridiculously stunning. It’s like stumbling into Tangled’s lantern night, but ten times more beautiful. The songs are so much fun, that when I got home, I went straight on iTunes to find them.
It’s worth the money and time spent on it, and it’s a movie I’d love to watch again. Maybe it could be my new Halloween tradition; instead of dressing up and denying my adulthood, I will just watch Coco and honor dia de los muertos.
Coco is a solid 9/10.
You should watch it if you haven’t. Watch with your family or friends. It’s such a wonderful movie to enjoy together with people you care about.
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