BEFORE: Lin-Manuel Miranda carries over from "In the Heights". I originally wasn't going to include this one here, but I just found out a few days ago that LMM makes a cameo appearance in tomorrow's film, so that created an opportunity to drop this one in here - it's an extra, I'll have to double-up to still get to my proposed Easter film in time, but I'm hoping this will be worth it.
I didn't want to abandon this one, create another "orphan" - I was going to go straight on from "In the Heights" to tomorrow's film, but since I'm trying to get to all these random animated (randomated) films, let's take a chance and drop another one in. This one also had a screening at the theater where I work, it was on a double-bill with "In the Heights", so I had a feeling that Lin-Manuel might show up, only he didn't. BUT, he did come a few weeks later with tomorrow's film, which he directed.
THE PLOT: A kinkajou spends his days playing music in Cuba with his beloved owner Andrés, but when tragedy strikes after a letter from the famous Marta Sandoval, inviting her old partner to her farewell concert, it's up to Vivo to deliver a message that Andrés never could: a love letter in the form of a song.
AFTER: Eh, I don't know about this one. I passed on the opportunity to watch this when it was on the big screen, and maybe that was the right call. This was pitched to Dreamworks Animation way back in 2010, and then that company restructured in 2015, leaving this film without a home. Sony Pictures then picked it up in 2016, and put it on their release schedule for December 2020 - only when 2020 rolled around, most theaters were of course shut down. I get it, pandemics happen and plans change, so they made a deal to put it on Netflix with a quick theatrical release in July of 2021. Like all of us over the last two years, this film's been through a lot.
But Lin-Manuel's always been part of the process - Dreamworks set the ball rolling with him shortly after the success of "In the Heights", the stage version. Then shortly after Dreamworks dropped it and Sony Pictures acquired it, "Hamilton" took off, so somebody must have felt like they hit the lottery. Beyond that, I really don't know the timetable for the animation, it was fast-tracked in 2016, but the cast wasn't announced until April 2021. That doesn't seem to leave a lot of time to animate the characters to the voices, so I suspect that the dialogue was recorded much earlier, and teams of people were working on the animation for months and months in relative secrecy.
And, well, it's a bit of a mixed result. Some of the characters here are just weird, some of them have really scrunched-up faces and I'm just not sure if that's a chosen style, or just represents a weird way of doing things. The lead young-girl character is presented as a bit of an odd duck, like she's got purple hair and is portrayed as a "creative" type, but she's also socially awkward and fairly clueless about how annoying she is to most people. Like, is this a conscious effort to appeal to the kids with ADHD or the social misfits? Generally speaking, "annoying" shouldn't be a character trait when you're trying to create an appealing film, but maybe it's a whole new world out there, and the social misfits are now in charge? Gabi is a musician, or at least she thinks she is, plus she's a horrible singer, but doesn't realize it. Wait, am I supposed to LIKE her? OK, I guess perfect kids with perfect voices are stuck-up and annoying in their own way, so I guess the take-away here is that all kids are annoying. I can get behind this, but it's just weird to see it stated like that in a film.
The Sand Dollar girls (a trio of over-achieving Girl Scout types) are also annoying, but in a different way. They stand for aggressively selling cookies, aggressively recycling, and aggressively saving the environment. They're "Mean Girls" in uniform, basically, so I didn't really like them either - where are the nice, average, relatable kids who aren't so hyper and aggro? I guess they don't exist in this world. (No boys, either, so I guess the animation world is now girls only, which seems like maybe they've over-compensated for the patriarchal past?).
Anyway, the main plot concerns a kinkajou voiced by Lin-Manuel (if there was a screenwriter or studio executive who wagered that LMM couldn't find a rhyme for "kinkajou", that person totally lost...) who's got some musical ability, and performs with his owner (sorry, adoptive parent, we can't show people "owning" animals any more, it's out of fashion...) Andrés on the streets in Cuba. This is also tricky narrative ground, because it calls to mind all those organ-grinders of the past who used monkeys to collect money on the streets, and that's one step away from enslaving an animal, right? So this has to now be depicted as a musical "partnership", to avoid people protesting the film.
It's all a bit odd, because this film very quickly runs into the "Chewbacca problem". Most animated films have talking animals, sure, but they talk to and understand each other, you can't really have humans and animals talking to each other, because this isn't "Dr. Dolittle", in the end. So Vivo the kinkajou is singing in English, the audience can understand him, but the humans in the film can't. A couple of times in the film, we hear him chittering, and this is the way he sounds to the animated people. OK, so he's not singing a duet with Andrés, not really, but then what IS he doing? Chittering in time with the music? Umm, so what? That's not really much of a performance, then, is it? So, is Vivo intelligent like a person or dumb like an animal? It can't be both. So we draw a line, the other animals can understand him, but the people can't, then that still doesn't fall in line with the film that we're being shown, where we the audience can understand him.
I know it seems like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but later in the film, it's VERY important to the questline that Vivo and Gabi get on the same page, like HOW do they get there and figure out the answer to the problem if they can't talk to each other? I guess they just wave their arms and shout at each other until they somehow land on the solution? Fundamentally, it just doesn't WORK. I've spoken at length in the past about how problematic the language barrier between Han Solo and Chewbacca is, and even the "Star Wars" movies can't really decide how it all works - the books and the "Solo" movie just made it even more confusing.
Then we kind of get to the real problem with the story here - it's very sad, because just as Andrés is planning to go from Cuba to Miami and re-connect with his musical partner, Marta, the worst possible thing happens to him. Yep. Life's like that sometimes, and so Vivo gets it in his head that he needs to make the trip himself and find Marta, to deliver that song Andrés wrote for her, only he's a kinkajou and he doesn't know how to do that. To be fair, Andrés never would have been able to bring his pet kinkajou with him to the U.S., and the film just sort of brushes this aside, it's a huge plot-hole (NITPICK POINT). There are quarantine rules, animal bans, import laws, etc - and these do come up later, when mentioned by the Sand Dollar girls, but they should have been a consideration right from the start - how was Andrés planning to work around them?
Vivo gets around the rules by stowing away in Gabi's instrument case, but wouldn't that have seen searched by airport personnel, as a piece of luggage? Wouldn't someone from TSA have noticed the animal hidden behind the accordion? Plus, now the film tells us that the rules are there for good reasons, but hey, if you think you can smuggle in an exotic animal, by all means, give it a try. That's a weird message to send out to the kids. Also, defying your mother and escaping from home to ride a bus across Florida without adult supervision is a darn good idea. Umm, no, it's not, and how the heck did this get approval as a plot-point?
In desperation, the movie then has to throw up a bunch of obstacles, like Gabi & Vivo missing the bus, falling off a bridge (!!), building a raft to get off the ship they landed on, and traveling through the Everglades, nearly getting eaten by a giant snake (!!) just to follow-through and get to Miami. None of this HAD to happen, if only Gabi could have reasoned with her mother like a rational human, explained the situation about the song, and stressed the need to attend that final concert. So many things wrong with this, like making Gabi's mother the antagonist just because she wants to protect her daughter, making it OK for Gabi to act out, run away and put herself in danger, sneak into a concert hall without a ticket, and then ultimately there being no repercussions for all this bad behavior. Gabi might be in the right here, but she's right for the wrong reasons. Bad messages for the kids, all around - there simply had to be a better way at the script stage to deal with these things. If there's a sudden rash of kids running away with kinkajous to sneak into concerts, you'll know who to blame.
On top of that, it's just so sad - maybe there could have been a better way, like have Andrés get sick instead of, well, you know, and Vivo then needed to make the trip alone because Andrés couldn't fly. Maybe then there could have been a point to this whole journey across Florida, instead of just making sure Marta knew that Andrés had feelings for her, only now it's too late. Just saying.
Also starring the voices of Ynairaly Simo, Zoe Saldana (last seen in "The Adam Project"), Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Gloria Estefan (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Nicole Byer (last seen in "Other People"), Katie Lowes (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Rich Moore (ditto), Olivia Trujillo, Lidya Jewett (last seen in "Wonder"), Christian Ochoa, Gloria Calderon Kellett, Leslie David Baker (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), Paloma Morales, Danny Pino, Alex Lacamoire, Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Tessie Santiago, Brandon Jeffords.
RATING: 4 out of 10 croquetas
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