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Watch Pixar’s ‘Coco,’ Then Watch These Movies

A minor introduction to Mexican cinema and more.
Coco
Pixar
By  · Published on November 25th, 2017

Back to the Future (1985)

We’re now past the Mexican cinema primer and onto the narrative parallels part of this week’s list. Steven Spielberg movies come to mind while watching Coco, with the animated feature’s co-director Adrian Molina admitting the red-hoodied protagonist, Miguel, is “a little Elliott from E.T.” And this classic Spielberg-produced blockbuster is surely the most evoked. There’s a visible connection in the way Miguel is gradually changing into skeletal form the longer he stays in the Land of the Dead, which is similar to how Back to the Future‘s Marty McFly is slowly disappearing the longer it takes him from getting his parents to fall in love.

In both cases, the main character is in a place or time where he can meet his ancestors. Coco is kind of like a time travel movie in that regard. The Land of the Dead is all about the past, and most of the skeletons Miguel meets there seem to be from the same early 20th century period. Miguel and Marty also both play the guitar and dream of making that their profession.


Beetlejuice (1988)

Tim Burton made his mark with this sophomore feature depicting a humorous look at the afterlife. Like Coco, there’s a bureaucratic system in place for its Land of the Dead, particularly when it comes to characters navigating between the afterlife and the Land of the Living. More than the movie, though, it’s the Beetlejuice cartoon that is similar to the world of Coco. Set mostly in the Land of the Dead, the series also has a mortal child navigating an afterlife filled with skeletons accompanied by a trickster character.


Little Monsters (1989)

Pixar fans will mostly recognize this comedy starring Fred Savage and Howie Mandel as an obvious precursor to the animated feature Monsters, Inc., given it’s about a land of monsters who travel to the real world to scare children in the night. But it also has a parallel to Coco in the way that the young boy protagonist (Savage) makes his way into the other world and teams up with a trickster companion (Mandel) and will unfortunately turn into one of that realm’s inhabitants if he doesn’t return to his own world before sunrise.


Frida (2002)

One more Mexican icon who appears in Coco, and not just in a cameo, Frida Kahlo never starred in any movies but did get a terrific biopic about her made in America. Helmed by visionary filmmaker Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek in an Oscar-nominated performance as Kahlo, the acclaimed feature does a fantastic job portraying the famously unibrowed artist and integrating her paintings into the storytelling by bringing some of them to life. Alfred Molina is also excellent in the role of her husband, painter Diego Rivera.

Another thing Frida and Coco share besides the former’s title subject is the folk song “La Llorona,” about a legendary Mexican ghost. Not only is the well-known version of the tune by Chavela Vargas on the soundtrack but Vargas, who was a friend of Kahlo in real life, also appears in the movie as a ghost who visits the artist. In Coco, the song is sung at the concert at the end by Mama Imelda and de la Cruz.


Dante’s Inferno (2007)

No list of movies tied to an adventure into the Land of the Dead would be complete without a version of at least some part of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem “The Divine Comedy.” An adaptation of “Inferno” is the most apt even if it’s about Hell and Coco‘s afterlife realm is not. The first instance of a character learning his hero is a bad person is probably when Dante encounters his mentor and adoptive guardian, Brunetto Latini, in the third ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell — of course, the poet wrote it to be so.

There are films of “Inferno” going back more than 100 years, but this hand-drawn puppet-based feature offers an interesting modernized take on the story through the underworld. Dante is voiced by Dermot Mulroney, with James Cromwell as his companion Virgil. Notorious figures added to Hell since the original version was written include Adolph Hitler, Jim Jones, Benito Mussolini, L. Ron Hubbard, and uh, Marilyn Monroe, and the rest of the voice cast includes Matt Walsh, Tony Hale, Martha Plimpton, Andrew Daly, and other funny people.


The Book of Life (2014)

When fans of this animated feature heard about Coco, they called it a rip-off. After all, the earlier movie was also a tribute to Mexican culture with a story based around the Day of the Dead and a trip to the afterlife. It even stars the voice of one of the two leads from Y Tu Mama Tambien (Diego Luna here, Gael Garcia Bernal there). Complainers about the double dip into Dia de Muertos were also focused on Disney’s attempt to trademark the Americanized phrasing of “Dia de los Muertos” and Pixar’s initial lack of Latino cast and crew on their movie.

Well, we can have two, because they’re each great in their own way. And the plot of The Book of Life is different enough. The main character here is expected to be a bullfighter instead of a shoemaker, and he enters the Land of the Dead because he thinks the love of his life has died. Once there, though, he does visit with his ancestors and he does play the guitar. In the end, this is the movie with more white stars, including Channing Tatum, Christina Applegate, and Ron Perlman, and it features a number of redone American and British pop songs on its soundtrack alongside its Mexican tunes.

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Christopher Campbell began writing film criticism and covering film festivals for a zine called Read, back when a zine could actually get you Sundance press credentials. He's now a Senior Editor at FSR and the founding editor of our sister site Nonfics. He also regularly contributes to Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes and is the President of the Critics Choice Association's Documentary Branch.