Director: Kirk DeMicco
Writers: Quiara Alegría Hudes, Peter Barsocchini
Studio: Sony Pictures Animation
Watched on: 21/12/2021
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Vivo
Ratings:
This film was a pleasant surprise. Not only did I have low expectations of it, I also paused it at about 10 minutes in (to go and do something) and was actually happy to just leave it at that. I was off for Christmas that week, so had plenty of time on my hands, so I did go back to it the next day and within the next 10 minutes, I was genuinely hooked back in. The rest of the film was then a bit underwhelming but all-in-all, a pretty solid family film.
The very first thing I noticed when I put this on was how the film achieved the effect of making the setting (in Havana) really feel like it was alive. It's something I noticed when I watched Coco and conversely, something I felt was lacking when I watched Glen Keane's 'Over the Moon' recently. The backgrounds and background characters moved and behaved in a way that felt settlingly real, as opposed to the kind of stagnant movement that reminds you that you're watching something that had to be animated piece by piece. Overall, the animation was fun and expressive and I'd say Sony did a really good job on the details and textures - I can't imagine generating kinkajou fur was an easy feat!
The majority of that pleasant surprise I mentioned earlier was in the directing. Lots of simple frames with basic symmetry etc. made the film pleasant to watch but the film also had a few really visually powerful moments, e.g. the fountain representing Vivo's tears at Andrés's death, the Florida swamps being used to make us feel lost and uncertain (any viewer with access to Netflix is likely far more comfortable in a City) and the music and background going completely silent and only Vivo's footsteps (not visual but still great directing). There were also some really great little visual comedy moments, like the bridge jump with the bike and also the set-up and let-down of them making the leap to the boat, which they brilliantly diffused by just making Gabi laugh about it. Also loved the little King Kong reference!
The story and characters were generally very surface-level, it has to be said. The plot (after those first 20 minutes) is literally just "need to do this thing", "have now done thing", with some pretty frivolous tasks in between. Like what was the point of the birds (spoonbills, Platalea ajaja) and the snake? If you took them out of the story, it still would have gone exactly the same. Ultimately, the end goal didn't move or change based on the events of the story. Maybe Gabi got closer to her mum a bit but even she didn't grow or change at all throughout the film, really. And again with Vivo himself, most his growth was done up front. And the whole lyrics vs. melody thing was pretttttty weak for me. I liked the last scene, which showed how they all live now and what they get up to after the move (which is all I ask from a lot of other movies). I did really like that Vivo got to carry on what he did with Andrés with his kin.
One thing I really really noticed, was along with my usual dislike of Lin-Manuel Miranda's approach to hip hop (which is blatantly that of an outsider to the genre in my opinion), I also noticed the guy really can't sing that well. I'd say he didn't even sing well enough for his part in this; at certain points you could hear he was out of his range. The songs were mostly not great but I think there were 1 or 2 I did like. The big song around which the entire story hinges was thoroughly underwhelming. I do also have to say, Coco did the whole song for a final memory thing and of course did it infinitely better.
All in all, a pleasant surprise but not much better than that. Animation was very nice though.
