Coco

(Warning: contains spoilers for Coco)

How many feature films do you think Pixar have made?  About 10, right?  Nope - Coco is the 19th film from the creative team behind the films that made you weep as an adult, and is arguably the strongest film in Pixar's canon since 2015's Inside Out.

Set in Mexico, Coco is the story of 12 year old Miguel, who is the latest in a long line of shoemakers in a family that has banned music.  Miguels' great-great-grandfather was a musician who left Migel's great-great grandmother to go and pursue fame and fortune as a musician, and as such all music is forbidden.  Miguel doesn't want to be a shoemaker.  Miguel wants to be a famous musician.  Due to some vague magic (which may or may not be related to Día de Muertos - the Day of the Dead), Miguel finds himself in the Land of the Dead with his now deceased relatives, and must find a way back before morning, or he will become one of the dead too.  Las aventuras sobrevienen!

Hey cool - even the guitar is a skeleton!

It is worth noting that Coco is the first ever film with a nine figure budget to feature an all Latino cast (including Anthony Gonzalez, Benjamin Bratt, Gael García Bernal, Alanna Ubach and Edward James Olmos amongst others) .  Coco does for Mexican culture what Moana did for Polynesian culture, perhaps more successfully.  I feel I understand more about Día de Muertos and its importance in the Mexican community.  The film does a lot of work early on to help the uninformed viewer (i.e. me) understand the traditions surrounding this festival, and what happens if those traditions are not adhered to (specifically, that we have two deaths.  The first is the one that takes us from the Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead.  We remain in the Land of the Dead until the last person forgets us, and then we disappear completely.) That said, most of the films themes are more universal - family, life, assumptions, death and memories.
It doesn't sounds like it's going to be a cheery film - a boy spends his time sucked into the land of the dead, and in the land of the living the only person that he talks to is his grandmother who suffers from dementia...but Coco is nothing if not relentlessly positive in the face of significant adversity, which is typical of Pixar films.  The story is remarkably similar to Back To The Future (both are stories featuring young men who find themselves in impossible places, play guitar, solve issues with their families, have significant photos and risk vanishing if they get it wrong - writer and director Lee Unkrich has since said that although they didn't set out to borrow from it, the film was an influence on a lot of the people working on Coco), with nods towards It's A Wonderful Life.  Unkrich has also said that two important films that the crew referred back to were Billy Elliott and Whale Rider - stories of children torn between their own aspirations, and the wishes of their families.  Fans of those films will be better placed to make comparisons

Your kids are gonna love it...

The film looks stunning, with the Land of the Dead being portrayed as a series of interconnected neon districts, loosely based on Guanajuato in Central Mexico.  Each of the characters looks distinctive (which is no mean feat, given that they're all skeletons), and the alebrijes (animal spirit guides) are beautifully blacklit (black lighted? Whatever the word is for "done with black light").  A lot of time and love has gone into creating and realising this expression of the Land of the Dead, and it really pays off.  The first shots of Land of the Dead and the golden bridge are breathtakingly rich in design and detail and the overall effect is glorious.

This doesn't even do it justice.

Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez return as songwriters following the success of 2013's Frozen, and although there isn't anything as earwormy as Let It Go on the soundtrack, Remember Me is a lovely recurring song that has earned the pair a further Oscar nomination for Best Song.

My main criticism is that 1 hour 49 minutes, Coco is one of the longest Pixar films, and needlessly so.  While it doesn't drag it takes a while in getting set up, both in the Land of the Living, and in the Land of the Dead.  A lot of the initial back story is told quickly through the paper cuttings in the first five minutes, and is then repeated as the film goes on.  Considering how much Pixar has historically proved they can pack into a 90 minute film (and has proved that they can tell an entire lifetime in under 5 minutes and not lack for emotional response in Up), tighter storytelling could have made for a much leaner film.  That said, it has a very strong third act which pulls everything together well and hits it's emotional beats well in a way that was missing from Finding Dory and The Good Dinosaur.

Miguel begins the film stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Should he follow his dream and play music, or listen to his family and ban it from his life?  The decision at the start is two really contrasting ideas.  By the end of the film, the choice is a small and easy one, both for Miguel and his family (living and dead).  It also involves realistic shifts in attitudes from everybody (living and dead).  The main takeaway messages for viewers to chew on are these: what sort of legacy actually matters, how do you want to be remembered, and whose responsibility is it to remember you?  And, arguably, if you are remembered do you ever really die?

Additional comments, questions and concerns:

• There is no Pixar short.  The one that was planned - Olaf's Frozen Adventure - was scrapped after poor audience reception.  At 21 minutes long, it would have made the total running time well over 2 hours long (and maybe less appealing to younger Pixar fans).  A 21 minute short seems like a terrible idea - that's pretty much the average length of an episode of Friends.  If it's the length of an actual television programme, it's not a short.

• A113 can be found in the office of the Bureau of Family Grievances.

• If someone's memory is disgraced, aren't they still remembered?

• Dante looks a lot like Ed from The Lion King

• 

  Ed

Dante

• Remember: the film is called Coco. (*small tear*)

• Coco arrives at an interesting time.  While Donald Trump continues to sow seeds of discord about Mexico and its inhabitants, Coco quietly and sympathetically shows a nondescript family in a nondescript town, and shows that they're just like everyone else in their family love and squabbles.  Well played, Pixar.

Moana

(Warning: contains spoilers for Moana, and probably a whole lot of other Disney films)

We are in the middle of a new age of Disney.  You must have noticed - that suddenly even the harshest critics are grudgingly admitting that Let It Go is a pretty catchy tune and that Zootropolis was one of the better films of 2016 (yes, it was about bunnies but it also had Breaking Bad references).  Actually we're in the middle of the fourth Disney-era, commonly known as the Disney Revival Era. There's been the Golden Age (everything from 1937 to the 80s, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty etc), the Renaissance Era (everything from 1989-99 including Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin), the Post-Renaissance Era (2000-07, ending with the merger with Pixar, films including Tarzan and Lilo and Stitch), and now the Disney Revival Era (2008 to date, including Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6).

To me, the interesting thing about the Disney Revival Era is the correction of popularly held tropes from Golden era Disney.  Where Cinderella teaches that if you wish hard enough and just sit there, all your dreams will magically come true, The Princess and the Frog teaches that having a dream is fine, but you'll have to work for it.  Where Sleeping Beauty emphasises the importance of true love, Frozen allows that true love can, in fact, come from your family and maybe you shouldn't agree to marry the first man you sing a song with if you don't know anything else about him.  Disney women in the 21st century are tougher and more independent creatures, and that's part of the reason why there's currently a petition to have Princess Leia added to that pantheon of princesses.

Into that mix comes Moana, which is the story of a Polynesian tribal heir who is chosen to restore the heart of the goddess Te Fiti, and thus restore the failing fortunes of her tribe's island.  There is the usual singing and dancing, but there's a number of notable key features:

Two sidekicks!  And that little turtle from Finding Nemo! 

1.  No love interest
This is unusual.  Moana is the 56th animated Disney film but the last film where the main character was female and human and had no love interest was 2002's Lilo and Stitch.  There isn't even the mention of wanting a partner, it's just not an issue ("but she's only 16, Caroline!" "yes, but so was Ariel, and Jasmine was only 15.").

2.  Both parents survive                

Hey, you just couldn't wait to be king...

Parents don't do well in Disney films.  Main characters are usually orphans (e.g. Aladdin), or one parent has remarried (usually after the death of the first, usually the mother - e.g. Snow White), or one parent dies during the film (e.g. Mufasa).  In the past 20 films, I think there might be just three instances where the main character comes from a two-parent family who begin and end the film together.  I will buy a Disney film for the first person who can name them.  But Moana has two parents, who are still alive by the time the credits roll.  Hurrah!

3.  Non-white culture
There's not a lot of diversity in Disney.  Human heroines tend to be Caucasian and skinny with long straight hair.  Moana shares a platform with Lilo and Pocahontas as being a main character with a different kind of body type. Excellent.  More of this, please.
The references to Moana's culture are interesting - we learn of their community way of life, their references to their ancestors and their heritage, and the significance of their tattoos.  More importantly, we learn about these things in a way that feels organic, rather than heavy-handed. 

I just really like this film.

My understanding is that Moana did receive some criticism from the Polynesian community because of a lack of female goddess to match the demi-god Maui.  Specifically, the goddess Hina (a companion to Maui) was missing, an importance which is explained in this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/goddess-hina-the-missing-heroine-from-disneyʼs-moana_us_5839f343e4b0a79f7433b6e5

4.  Compromise
Disney is full of independent women who want to defy their parent(s) and live out their own dream, but this usually manifests in the parents learning that the kids are right and should go and do their thing.  I can't think of any examples outside of Moana where the hero manages to balance their dreams with their responsibilities.  Ariel went off and lived in the human world, Sleeping Beauty married the man of her dreams (who accidentally happened to be her betrothed).  Moana gets to explore life outside the reef as a wayfarer (what she wanted), while also leading her tribe (what her parents wanted).  Fair play.

But the thing that particularly interested me - Restorative Justice in a Disney film.  Actually, Restorative Justice at all in a film.  Maui recognises the harm that he has done to Te Fiti, apologises and makes it right in a way that is acceptable to Te Fiti.  This pleases me.

This is a film worth seeing.  It's full of positive messages, redresses some unhelpful Disney tropes, and seems to directly reference Mad Max: Fury Road, while there's a giant crab who sings like David Bowie.  What's not to like?

Mad Max?  Surely that's a Mad Max reference?