Review: Pixar's animated film 'Coco'.

A couple of days ago, me and my friend managed to watch Pixar's animated film 'Coco'. We managed to watch this Academy Award winning film after having postponed watching the movie for quite some time.

After all, we decided to see the film because most of the time Pixar has managed to produce films that are well made. In most cases they have managed to deliver movies that put you on a good mood and that manage to keep you entertained.

So now that we've seen this movie about a Mexican kid "in the land of the dead", how good did the movie turn out to be? How good is the film compared to those other solid Pixar films like Toy Story and Finding Nemo? 

The first thing that needs to be said about 'Coco' is that like every film that Pixar has produced, the movie does look good. There's no denying that a huge amount of effort went into making sure that the film would look as good as possible.

By that I mean that all the characters in the movie look and feel super lively. Both the living and the 'dead' characters in the film look so good that you can only be in awe how well the graphics artists were able to create them.

Not only does the film look good, 'Coco' also sounds really good. It's apparent that all the voice actors in the movie do a good job and the film has a really solid soundtrack that you can't help but to enjoy listening.

Still, just because the movie looks and sounds good, that doesn't automatically mean that the movie is going to be great. Just because all those other aspects in the film work, that doesn't mean that the story is going to be awesome too.

Indeed, when it comes to the story, there are certain things in the film that don't work that well. Even though the story in 'Coco' is kinda okay, the script could have been a lot better than what writers were able to come up with.

Very likely the biggest problem with the story is that it drags too much in certain places. There are clearly moments in the film when the story comes to a standstill and the animation doesn't have a purpose or direction.

For example, when our main character is trying to locate his savior in 'the land of the dead', the movie simply lacks stakes. It feels as if our protagonist doesn't have any real obstacles that would make us interested in what's going on.

This lack of urgency for the protagonist - that might have been caused by a weakish inciting incident - feels so severe that I kept nodding off during the film's second act. I simply could not keep my eyes open during some those weak moments in the movie.

The second issue that I have with the story has to do with the characters and the structure not making sense. In certain scenes it's obvious that it was the story structure driving the characters and not the other way around.

For example, throughout the movie, I couldn't help but to think that 'Hector's' behavior was a bit too inconsistent. His character changed based on what was required in the story, regardless of whether it made sense or not.

This was also obvious in the scenes with our protagonist's savior character (great grandfather). In these scenes where the protagonist interacted with the 'supposed' great grandpa, the story made no sense and really felt muddled and convoluted.

After all, when our protagonist's savior turned out to be the villain - five minutes after heroically saving our protagonist from drowning, that was clearly bad storytelling from the writers. These scenes made no sense and were thematically all over the place.

Still, when it all is said and done, even though there were clearly problems with the film's screenplay, that doesn't mean that these flaws ruined the film. I'm not saying that these story problems were so severe that they outweighed the good things about it.

After all, when you evaluate the movie as a whole, I think it's obvious that 'Coco' still has a lot of redeeming qualities in it. These good qualities, like the film's overall positive message and the writers of the movie trying something new counts too.

In the end, even though the screenplay for the film should have been a lot better, the story is still not bad. The basic story in the film is not awful, even though there are certain problems with script and its characters that are fairly apparent.

In that sense, if you're a person that likes watching animations, 'Coco' is likely going to be a film that you'll enjoy watching. You'll likely enjoy watching it, because despite its flaws, the film still manages to entertain and it manages to put you on a good mood.