coco (lee unkrich and adrian molina, 2017)

Coco is a multi-award winning film, including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It filled absences in many of my "Blind Spot" Letterboxd lists of popular movies I haven't seen. It is a landmark in Latino cinema, "the first film with a nine-figure budget to feature an all-Latino principal cast." I am pretty picky about animated features ... I love Miyasaki, like a lot of Pixar films, but am not a fan of a lot of the animated musicals that are ever-present. Coco comes from Pixar, and it is one of their best.

I watched in Spanish ... dubbing for animated films doesn't bother me, but ordinarily I'd have opted for English. But I knew they had made a specific Spanish-language version of Coco, and given its setting in Mexico and its emphasis on Mexican culture, Spanish seemed like the proper choice. (The only voice actor to appear in both versions is Gael García Bernal.) I can't make comparisons, but at the least, I was very satisfied with the Spanish voices.

I was also satisfied with the songs, which is often where I check out. I don't know if it was the way the Spanish-language versions felt less intrusive or something else, but I didn't gag. Meanwhile, the way Coco shows not just that Family Is Good but that Family Is Difficult was done in a pretty powerful way. Honestly, I didn't expect to like Coco ... now I can't wait to watch with my grandson.

Comments

[Tomás]

So, so good.