Director: Lee Unkrich
Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach
Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I can’t even claim that COVID has thrown my more recent movie consumption out of whack. This one came from the before times, and I’ve had a Disney+ subscription since halfway through the first season of The Mandalorian. I’m behind on all things Pixar and it’s making me feel weird.
Did I Like It: There’s more than enough written about Pixar’s unique ability to make people cry within the first few minutes of a movie. I don’t want to talk about that, mainly because its been talked about death, but really mainly because I’m a robot and my creators forgot to build me with the ability to have my emotions seep out of my eyes*.
What I do want to talk about is the unique ability of Pixar movies to confound expectations in their storytelling. At about the five-minute mark in this film—just at the crest of Lora’s first set of tears—I felt like I was going to be done with the film. Ernesto de la Cruz (Bratt) is Miguel’s (Gonzalez) great-great-grandfather and the one excised from the family history. I’m one of those people that write the rest of the film far too quickly, and the Pixar folks see me coming a mile away every time. There’s a perfectly acceptable kids movie filled with Day of the Dead imagery and filled with Latin music about embracing your true destiny and bring music back to your begrudging family. This movie is ready to go straight for the throat and expose the pulsating jugular and try to say something about how long and anger can be so interchangeable as to practically be quantum states.
*Which wouldn’t be a terribly pitch for a new Pixar movie, while we’re on the topic…