Coco

Hav­ing already dealt with such exis­ten­tial­ly weighty top­ics as chron­ic depres­sion (Inside Out), the nature of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (WALL‑E) and the per­ils of phys­i­cal decay (Up), the crazy kids over at Pixar have land­ed on their lat­est fam­i­ly-friend­ly dis­cus­sion point: impend­ing mor­tal­i­ty. With this being a dig­i­tal­ly-ani­mat­ed adven­ture epic, the whole con­cept of merg­ing with the infi­nite is repack­aged in a way that’s cheer­ful, amus­ing and super fun for kids of all ages.

Young scamp Miguel (Antho­ny Gon­za­lez) shines shoes by day and wor­ships at his secret hand-built shrine to pea­cock­ing trou­ba­dour Eren­esto de la Cruz (Ben­jamin Bratt) at night. By strange quirk, his fam­i­ly abide by a strict no music pol­i­cy, down to a roman­tic alter­ca­tion from a few gen­er­a­tions past. For rea­sons that are not alto­geth­er clear, Miguel is trans­port­ed to the Land of the Dead on – coin­ci­den­tal­ly – the annu­al Day of the Dead, where he must learn a few lessons about pride and the impor­tance of mem­o­ry before he’s able to return back to the nest.

The team behind the project (as Pixar’s film are rarely the prod­uct of a sin­gle mind) have par­layed years of Mex­i­can tra­di­tion and super­sti­tion into a light-heart­ed fan­ta­sy about how life is extend­ed for as long as peo­ple are able to keep our spir­it alive in their hearts and minds. Pho­tog­ra­phy – and, by exten­sion, cin­e­ma – are the tools used to keep that flame burning.

This time around, the intel­lec­tu­al under­pin­ning isn’t quite served by a sto­ry which is too often ham­pered by lazy con­trivances and lots of lucky escapes. The design is as pris­tine as we’ve come to expect from this out­fit, although at times feels like it’s been pushed a lit­tle far. Sub­tle pat­terns are etched onto the skele­ton faces of the denizens of the Land of the Dead, but the cute spir­it ani­mals are paint­ed in gar­ish neon and their pur­pose with­in the plot is large­ly functional.

There is a bark­ing mad mutt named Dante, yet any deep­er lit­er­ary allu­sions begin and end there. But if Pixar have a cer­tain spe­cial touch to their work, it’s the tac­tile qual­i­ty they achieve through the ren­der­ing of skin and the tex­tures they build up on every sur­face. Even though the film is very much a car­toon in the Dis­ney tra­di­tion, its mak­ers employ every trick in the book to make you ques­tion whether you’re watch­ing an organ­ic object implant­ed with­in a dig­i­tal backdrop.

It’s a weird one, though… On one side, you have to be thrilled by the fact that there are film­mak­ers out there will­ing to nudge the bound­aries of fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed ani­mat­ed fare. Yet on the oth­er, it’s appears increas­ing­ly clear that Pixar are becom­ing a vic­tim of their own suc­cess. The issue isn’t down to what the films look or feel like – it’s more that they’re all start­ing to feel awful­ly sim­i­lar. With a few lone excep­tions, the very idea of a sequel appears to direct­ly con­tra­vene Pixar’s con­stant push for originality.

Coco isn’t a sequel, but its eccen­tric quest nar­ra­tive in which a young per­son learns a valu­able life les­son is start­ing to feel care­worn and unsur­pris­ing. This film pos­i­tive­ly pops with ideas, and there’s more val­ue in a sin­gle frame of this than in an entire air hanger’s worth of Emo­ji Movies. And yet, it’s not quite up there with the gold­en greats of this vaunt­ed ani­ma­tion behemoth.