Coco (2017)

It takes a lot to make me cry. It’s not that I don’t have emotions; I just don’t show them through crying. I’ve seriously cried in public only a handful of times in my memory, and I have never cried while watching a movie.

Well. Frick you Pixar. You finally did it. You made me cry while I was watching Coco.

In all seriousness, Pixar has done a very good job with making me feel emotion at the movies, but Coco went to a whole other level. It does have some of the best computer animation I have ever seen (more on that later), but it’s the emotional component that makes Coco the great film it is. 

A big part of this is due to the story’s depiction of Mexican culture. Coco gives the celebration of the Day of the Dead and the culture’s value of family so much justice that it made me think often about what my own family, both living and deceased, would think of the decisions I have made in my life. By the movie’s climax – one of the many examples of the power of Coco’s music – I had become so familiar with Miguel’s (the main character, a musical talent in a family of shoemakers) perspective that I felt the same emotions he was feeling (or at the ones he was showing on screen). That is what pushed Coco over the edge for me: I have seen very few films that have done that for me for someone of a completely different culture. 

Coco’s animation does so many favors to the film’s quality as well. Typically, every Pixar film shows evolution over the last, but Coco has so much more fine detail than any other animated film that the second best is far in its dust. The textures on everything – from run-down houses and shoe workshops to the fur of a very interesting and colorful Pegasus-cat thing to the skin on every single human character – are perfect. Like, actually perfect. There were moments where I would see the flame of a candle and swore that they had somehow superimposed the image of a candle’s flame onto the animation. It was that photorealistic, yet at the same time it avoided the trap of the uncanny valley (a phenomenon where things that appear to be human are so close that they seem unnatural and disturbing) because it is only the physics and the textures that are exactly like those of real humans: the characters still have cartoonish designs in the best possible way that make it clear that they are not real.

While the animation is just that good – as are all the other qualities by which animated musical films are judged – it is Coco’s emotional appeal and ability to clearly portray the perspectives of Miguel and his family that make it such a good film. It’s immediately jumped high into my rankings of animated films and is easily one of the best films of the year.

My recommendation: Definitely go see this, and bring a pack of tissues with you.

My grade: 95/100