Movie Review: Coco

Coco

Coco is a lovely story about a boy called Miguel who wants to play music, which is forbidden by his family since his great, great grandfather left his great great grandmother Imelda to pay music rather than settling down to raise his daughter, Coco. As the movie progresses, he sneaks out to take part in a talent show for Día de los Muertos, stealing the guitar of the great musician Ernesto de la Cruz, whom he believes is his great great grandfather after he saw a photo of him with his face torn off, holding Ernesto’s guitar. When he steals the guitar, he becomes invisible to everybody but can be seen by all of the ghosts who are returning to spend time with their families, as is tradition. However, they can only appear if their photo is on their families ofrenda, and Miguel has removed his Imelda’s photo after he damaged it. He can return to the land of the living only if he gets forgiven by a member of his family, Imelda, who places two conditions on his return — that he places her photo back on the ofrenda, and that he never plays music again. As soon as he returns he picks the guitar back up and is transported back to the land of the dead, where he decides to seek Ernesto’s forgiveness. On the way to find Ernesto, he meets Héctor who agrees to help him find Ernesto, on the condition that he puts his photo up on an ofrenda so he can see his daughter one more time. Since she is the only person who remembers him, when she goes, he will disappear forever, so he will never have the chance to see her again if he doesn’t get his photo to the land of the living. We learn, after Miguel meets Ernesto and there’s a bit of a showdown, how Ernesto killed Héctor, who is really Miguel’s great great grandfather, when Héctor wanted to return home to be with his wife and child, Coco, stealing his songs and his guitar. Of course, good transpires in the end, Miguel returns to the land of the living and Héctor is returned to the ofrenda, when Miguel plays one of the songs that Héctor wrote to her and she remembers him, showing Miguel the other part of the photo with his face on it, and also all of the poems and songs that Héctor sent to her when he was away. These also prove to the people in the town that Héctor, not Ernesto, deserves remembering, which saves Hector from being forgotten. I’ve gotten through this without even mentioning Dante, Miguel’s Xoloitzcuintli street dog. This dog absolutely steals the show whenever he’s on the scene, the movie Is worth seeing if just for Dante. The scene where he dies and turns into an alebrije is one of the saddest, happiest scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.