 I'm Elise Anderson, reviewing the new movie, Coco. In early December 2017, Disney Pixar's Coco reportedly became the highest-grossing box-office hit of any opening weekend film in Mexican history. Inherent to this kind of exposure is, of course, a demand for cultural sensitivity. Coco does not disappoint. After watching the film, one concedes this month's attention wholly deserved. Being myself a big fan and loyal patron of Disney Land's eerie New Orleans square neighborhood, I eagerly awaited this film as an obvious upgrade to Disney ghost lore. I foresaw a new ride, maybe a roadside fortune teller next to the beignets, a day of the dead-themed dining experience, or perhaps a revamped holiday theme in the haunted mansion. Whether or not Coco ultimately lends itself to my theme park fancies, it does twist Disney's cultural canon in a delightfully dreamy direction of ghostly gravitas. John Lasseter's clever production is both gorgeous and shrewd. A brief introduction turns our necks to appreciate the minute details, thousands of faces and millions of lights that suffuse even the most fleeting scenes in this film. The result is an enveloping world, one so convincing and complete that small children may frighten more easily than usual because they think it's real life. Supernatural phenomena and mundane electricity alike penetrate our eyes with iridescent shimmery glows. Faces jump to life between emotional extremes, characters get convincingly dirty and wet, it's simply a visual feast. The plot also goads us to think. We ride young Miguel's emotional roller coasters, he traverses the tricky dynamics of a loving yet overbearing extended family and its historic disdain for his own driving passion in life. Music. Most of the film pits Miguel's idea of family against his idea of personal aspiration, but through a clean and delicate plot twist we eventually see family, community and personal passion fused in the end as one and the same. Tensions resolve and loyalties shift as Miguel solves mysteries and helps the world to remember the truth as it really occurred. Identities transform on screen and all is not as it seems, we crean off the edge of our seats till the end. Children will love everything from the punchy colors to the flying painted dogs to the architectural depths to the skeletal silliness, that is those old enough to not cry in terror first at the cranky and craggly old grandmother in her violently loud abrasive ornery ways. Adults however will likely find one thing particularly thought provoking about cocoa and that's its portrayal of skeletons. Death in the film and in Mexican folklore, unlike standard American fare, is not something to shy away from in fear. In fact, my own three-year-old moviegoing companion cried more at the living characters than at the skeletal dead. The film stares death in the face, not flinching a muscle at visible femurs and spines. Skeletons are just as alive as human beings, albeit in their own parallel world. Some skeletons even retain marks of physical and sexual glamour and glitz. Cocoa begins with a narrative that muddles the divide between death and the living world. This tiny child in one story, namely Coco herself, is soon the decrepit crone in the next. Whole lifetimes are traversed back and forth many times. Already big, even just in animated stills, Cocoa attempts and grasps an even bigger picture of life and death far beyond one's story's domain. It's a film to see with your family or kids, then probably to see again, at least once in your lifetime as well. Three and a half laudable stars for Cocoa. Thanks for watching. I'm Elise Anderson.