Once again, the skilled artists working at Pixar Animation Studios have exercised their expertise in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling to raise the art of CGI filmmaking with a colorful, unique, heart-tugging, joyful, and memorable film. The venerable studio’s 19th animated feature Coco takes place during one day and night, a time known in Mexico as Dìa de Muertos, the Day of the Dead. If you think a one-day timeframe confining, you underestimate Pixar.
Disney•Pixar’s Coco centers on Miguel, a 12-year-old boy in the fictional town of Santa Cecilia. Named after the patroness of music, the village was the hometown of the most famous musician in all of Mexico, Ernesto de la Cruz. Miguel, an aspiring young singer and self-taught guitarist, idolizes de la Cruz. But, the boy’s family of shoemakers has hated everything related to music for generations – ever since Miguel’s great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife, Imelda, and their family to pursue a musical career. Now Miguel secretly plays his homemade guitar in an attic hideout. That tension alone between Miguel’s aspirations and his love of family might be enough conflict for some filmmakers. But, Pixar takes the story to another level, into a parallel world, the Land of the Dead.
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