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The Book of Life Movie Review

The Book of Life is a 2014 animated musical fantasy film directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez and starring Diego Luna. It is an undeniably messy, but authentic and dazzling feature.

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“What’s with Mexicans and death!“

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In a bid to save the love of his life, Manolo sacrifices himself and is transported to the Land of the Remembered, where he reunites with his dead ancestors and strives to get his life back. This movie came out three years before ‘Coco’, and although it’s not quite similar in terms of quality to that movie, it came close enough. And it was released first, so we have to admire it for its originality.

The film celebrates Mexican culture wonderfully. It is a great homage to their traditions and especially the Day of the Dead. The movie honors the diseased as well as the living while pinpointing that those who passed away never quite leave us. It’s a moving story in that regard, though it rarely reached the depth and the sophistication that this difficult subject matter requires.

My main issue with this flick is the screenplay. It’s very pedestrian. Where it does succeed is in the ancient storytelling tropes and techniques that make it timeless and a great way to honor the Mexican stories of old, but where it doesn’t succeed is in updating the source material to modern times with the pop-culture references being particularly annoying and unnecessary. The overall story is predictable in its turns and most of the beats and it’s a frustratingly straightforward take on a unique world that deserved more authenticity in the script.

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Diego Luna is very good as Manolo, who is the protagonist of the picture. He is a standard hero of these stories as he doesn’t want to bullfight, but to make music. Maria is the love interest, but at least she is a more proactive and feminist take on that tired trope. Joaquin is the closest friend to Manolo and the two share a great dynamic, but the love triangle was tiresome. Xibalba and La Muerte are the only really interesting personalities here and it’s a shame that the movie did not deal more with these supernatural and mythological entities as they stole the show from the heroes themselves.

The Book of Life’s highlight is obviously the animation. It is so meticulously detailed and so refreshing for a CGI feature to have such odd and unique character designs in particular. The designs are so authentic, in fact, that they perfectly complemented its setting and its time period. The backgrounds are colorful and gorgeous while the effects made the movie really pop throughout. Yes, one can certainly argue that these angular, slender figures would have fit better within the realm of stop-motion and they would be right, but it was still great that we got a computer animated flick that looks different than any other American CGI film out there.

This film is a musical and its soundtrack is a fittingly lively tribute to Mexican music. Although too many numbers here are your standard American-sounding pop tunes, the ones that are more culturally authentic are I Will Wait and The Ecstasy of Gold, both featuring sounds and tones that are different and more traditional. It’s a shame that these audio-visuals weren’t accompanied by stronger dialogue as it’s rather simplistic. The pacing is also too frenetic with too much action. But still, the authenticity of this picture made it triumph over its many flaws.

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