(Minor
Spoilers Ahead)
Anyone who knows me knows that I am on top of movie
schedules like a hawk. I’m the guy who managed to see four films at two
theatres in one day once (after only three or four hours of sleep.) So believe
me when I say The Book of Life came out of bloody nowhere. I think I only first
heard maybe a week or two before release which in terms of movie promotion is a
really short amount of time (for comparison the first teaser for Interstellar
came out last year.) So after work today, I decided to go check it out and see
how it was and even before I went in I had people admitting that they didn’t
know much about it. Well, let me tell you about it now.
Plot Summary – A group of children arrive at a museum,
where a tour guide takes them to a hidden exhibit about Mexico’s day of the
dead. There she tells them the story about a town called San Angel that begins
with three friends. They are Manolo (later voiced by Diego Luna), who’s the son
of a bullfighter but wants to play music, Joaquin (later voiced by Channing
Tatum), who wants to be like his fallen general father, and Maria (later voiced
by Zoe Saldana), daughter of the current general and the object of the two boy’s
young affection. Two Gods, La Muerta who’s the ruler of the land of the
remembered, and Xibalba who rules the land of the forgotten, see the trio and
decide to make a wager: La Muerta bets that if Manolo can win Maria’s heart,
Xibalba must leave humanity alone. If Joaquin can win Maria’s heart, Xibalba
and La Muerta much switch ruler ship of the realms. After an incident forces
Maria to leave town, upon her return the two boys begin to vie for her heart.
Xibalba decides to interfere, first by giving Joaquin a medal that will make
him immune to death and will fill him with courage as a boy and then, after
Manolo attempts to win over Maria with a romantic gesture, sends out a snake to
bite Maria and makes her appear to have died. When Manolo is blamed for Maria’s
death, Xibalba offers him the chance to reunite with her in the afterlife, to
which he accepts. When he discovers the ruse, he must find a way to return
home. (Man this was a long paragraph, sorry about that folks but there is a lot
to cover here.)
Pros – Right off the bat, first time director Jorge Gutierrez
shows off a classic day of the dead motif animation wise and it works pretty
much overall, as the character and the world designs are easily the best thing
about this film. The voice acting is well done too, as the characters do
genuinely sound Mexican (aside from Channing Tatum, although he does a good
job, he sticks out like a sore thumb,) and I would be remiss not to mention the
music. Mexican culture has its own style of music, which they use in effect to
cover American pop songs (Including but not limited to: I Will Wait by Mumford
and Sons, Creep by Radiohead, and Just a Friend by the one and only Biz Markie)
and all of them are done extremely well. The story is also well told and done
with a lot of heart.
Cons – I stand by what I said about the story being
well told and full of heart, but in it are also the movies two biggest faults.
It’s thinly written, and it’s predictable. How thin is it? They throw in almost
every element of these kinds of stories you can think of, and since Joaquin and
Manolo are both good guys, sometimes it happens twice. That’s where the
problems lies, cause if you’re going to use every story element out there but
don’t change them around too much then you’re going to see what’s going to
happen from a mile away.
Final Score – 8/10
If they had tried to shake up things story wise, the
score would be much higher, but the visuals, the music, and the way they tell
the story mostly make up for it. Hell I’m actually tempted to get the album
(and yes there is an album for the music thank god.)
I’ll most likely be covering John Wick next weekend,
but seeing book of life actually makes me go back and watch the other animated
film out right now I missed on release. So on Tuesday (most likely) expect a
review of The Boxtrolls.
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