BEFORE: I tagged out early from New York Comic-Con yesterday, though I worked all the hours at my boss's table that I said I would, which was all day Friday and half of Saturday. I figured I would spend the second half of Saturday walking around, taking photos, buying a couple of items, and just enjoying the convention. But I'd eaten lunch on Friday from a food truck, and I think I got some mild food poisoning from their macaroni salad, because on Friday night I was exhausted, only I couldn't sleep because I had the chills so bad my teeth were chattering. That only happens when I have a fever, like from an infection or something. I wasn't even hungry at dinner time, so I point my finger at the only food I ate on Friday, from the truck.
Now, usually if I have stomach trouble, which is rare, I solve it by not eating for 24 hours, really just clearing out the system. But this meant no dinner Friday and no breakfast Saturday, while working the Con, and by 1 pm I was really wiped out, no energy, because I hadn't eaten, there was no fuel in the tank. I'd trained my co-worker to take over the booth anyway, and an hour on the main show-floor, fighting the crowds of people who don't know how to properly walk through the aisles made me very angry, and I realized I could easily make myself feel better, just by going home. I'd taken enough photos, I bought one more Star Wars autograph for the collection (Forest Whitaker) and all I wanted to do was go home and take a nap, so I did.
The convention went really well, though - our sales were way up over two years ago, partially because we moved from a booth on the main floor to a (cheaper) table in Artist Alley, where the crowds were more serious about buying animation art, so even with less foot traffic, sales increased. And I only had to endure a short "I told you so" speech about how we should have made that move years ago. Silly me for trying to follow all the convention rules to the letter, especially the ones against selling DVDs at an artist's table.
Anyway, I slept a bit yesterday, the convention's behind me, and I'm looking forward to polishing off the last 25 or so films for the year. Cheech Marin carries over from "Race to Witch Mountain".
THE PLOT: Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer.
AFTER: This Pixar film came out two years ago, but I suppose I avoided it for a while for two reasons, the first being that it was very difficult to link to. Difficult, not impossible, because with John Ratzenberger doing a voice in every Pixar film, I figured I at least had an even shot that I could let a couple animated films build up, and then it would be easier. (But no, I needed to use "Toy Story 4" for a link earlier this year, so there went that plan...) Gabriel Iglesias has been doing a lot of voice-over work, too, but that turned out to not be too important, either. The other reason I didn't rush out to see this film when it was released was that I'd already seen "The Book of Life", another animated film from a different studio that also took on a version of the "Day of the Dead" story, and I didn't really see the need for two films on the same topic. But that is how these things work, for every "Finding Nemo" there's a "Shark's Tale", for every "A Bug's Life" there's an "Antz" (or "Bee Movie"), and for every "Happy Feet" there's a "Surf's Up" (or "Penguins of Madagascar").
I'm also very suspect about animated films about Christmas, because some of them get a bit too religious for my tastes, and I prefer a society where there's a clear separation of church and entertainment. Even that "Prince of Egypt" film a few years back was a bit too close to the edge for me. And if I don't think that the Old Testament should be turned into an animated film, I'm probably going to feel the same way about a film that suggests to kids that their ancestors are living in heaven, but look like skeletons and their souls get to come back to Earth once a year to visit, provided their family put their photos up on an altar of sorts. We're on some shaky ground here, mixing religion (or at least a belief in the afterlife) in with an animated film for kids, and I don't really approve.
There are some parts of this story that I did like, and obviously it's a take on the famous Orpheus story, where someone has to travel through the Underworld to redeem a soul, but that story featured a special case, ONE soul that would be allowed to travel back from the land of the dead. Suggesting that this is possible for multiple souls, and on an annual basis yet, well that just seems silly, and it puts a lot of crazy ideas into the minds of children, who might be better off imagining that there's no heaven, because then they'd be forced to make the best out of life on earth.
And I also found the method of traveling back and forth between the real world and the Land of the Dead was really very wonky here, like in "The Book of Life" a character had to really DIE to get there, which seems more believable. Here Miguel gets there because he steals a guitar? That seems weird by comparison. Like, I'd be willing to allow that he fell down while stealing the guitar and hit his head, and his whole trip to the afterlife was a coma dream, and he worked out some things while he was unconscious, but the film just didn't want to seem to head in that direction. Instead it's unclear whether his whole physical body went to the Underworld, or just his soul, or what. Sure, let's just skip all the details and take it as it comes, you steal a guitar to get there and you hold a flower petal to get back. Right.
The rest just seems formulaic - Miguel wants to be a musician, but that's the one profession that his family has completely forbidden him to pursue, because of something that happened a few generations ago. But don't we ALL end up picking the careers that we know will drive our parents the craziest? Or is that just me and everybody I know? And once he meets the deceased members of his family, and starts to unravel the mystery of what happened years before, he naturally assumes that he's the great-great-grandson of Ernesto de la Cruz, the most esteemed Mexican musical performer of all, based on the clues in the old family photo.
I did like the twist, however, it relied so heavily on coincidence that it fell into contrivance. How could Miguel have such a large family that not ONE of them, living or dead, could possibly complete a sentence to tell him more about his great-great-grandfather? This family doesn't just need to learn to appreciate music, they need to learn how to communicate with each other.
The film kind of won me back at the end with the emphasis on the importance of family, but that wasn't completely enough to make up for some very sloppy screenwriting throughout. Also, the stray dog character (Dante) is almost completely useless, it's not explained why he ALSO traveled to the Land of the Dead, and even though they (sort of) gave him something to do there, I still don't think that was enough to justify his presence. Sorry.
Also starring the voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal (last seen in "Casa de mi Padre"), Benjamin Bratt (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Alanna Ubach (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Renee Victor, Ana Ofelia Murguia (last seen in "Bandidas"), Edward James Olmos (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Alfonso Arau (last seen in "A Walk in the Clouds"), Selene Luna, Dyana Ortelli, Herbert Siguenza (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Jaime Camil (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets"), Sofia Espinosa, Luis Valdez, Lombardo Boyar (last seen in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"), Octavio Solis, Gabriel Iglesias (last heard in "Norm of the North"), Carla Medina, Blanca Araceli, Natalia Cordova-Buckley (last seen in "Destroyer"), Salvador Reyes, John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Toy Story 4")
RATING: 6 out of 10 dancing Frida Kahlos
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