a review of 寻梦环游记

Coco is a textbook Disney-Pixar production, safely following most rules of the Disney storytelling conventions. This is probably why the film merely entertained me, but didn't enchant me like the early Disney films and early Pixar films did, back when the fresh passion of the creators was still captured in the inspired results. As usual, the visuals are impressive, but the many similarities with Guillermo del Toro's The Book of Life — which was made earlier than Coco — bothered me. I liked The Book of Life more than Coco, including the much more dynamic and daring stylization of The Book of Life. What also irritated me a bit about Coco is that it felt like the studio held a competition how many Mexican stereotypes and cliches they could come up with. Then there are Disney's obligatory, hackneyed moral messages. Thanks to Coco we 'learn' that family is important, and just in case you might miss the message, Disney repeats it about forty times throughout the film, until you start hating the word "family".