Coco is a 2017 family/fantasy movie about a kid named Miguel. The movie starts with Miguel telling the story of his great-great-great grandmother Imelda, whose husband left her and her daughter Coco to pursue music. That caused Imelda to ban music from her house and learn how to make shoes as a family. Years later, Miguel’s grandmother still prohibited music.
Even with the music ban, Miguel loves it because of the artist Ernesto de la Cruz who inspires him to be a musician. One day when Miguel was cleaning someone’s shoes, he was going to play the guitar for a mariachi when his grandmother saw him, came to “save him”, and took him home. When he gets home he tells his family that he wants to participate in a talent show at the plaza but is stopped by his grandmother because it is the Day of the Dead. After getting lectured by his grandmother, Miguel plays the guitar. When Miguel finishes playing he sees his dad and has to run away he hides his guitar under the memorial table right as his mom, dad, and grandmother walk into the room he plays it off and they leave him alone but then his great-great-great grandmother’s picture falls off the table, when Miguel picks up the picture he sees that the picture is folded up and has a man on the other side with a guitar that looks like the one that Ernesto had before he passed.
When Miguel saw this, he immediately concluded that Ernesto had to be his great-great-great grandfather and ran to tell his grandmother, who yelled at him that he would ruin his life. Miguel ran away and tried to take Ernesto’s guitar from his memorial but set off the alarm for some reason. When security came, they couldn’t see Miguel and walked straight through him. Miguel runs straight into an open grave and is helped up by a skeleton lady who, when she sees him, screams. Miguel runs away again and runs into his dead relatives who bring him to the world of the dead. When Miguel gets to the dead world they go to see Imelda and are told that their family is cursed and that they need to get a blessing for Miguel to go home. Imelda gives him her blessing, and he goes back and immediately breaks his conditions so he is sent back to the world of the dead. Miguel runs away from his family and runs into Hector, a man who is trying to get to the live world but isn’t allowed to. He convinces Hector to take him to Ernesto so that he can get his blessing but his family spots him so he runs away again. He goes under a bridge with Hector who paints him to look dead. Once Hector finished painting himself, he and Hector go to where Ernesto is supposed to be practicing for his great performance but he is not there, in fact, he is across town throwing a party so Miguel and Hector decide to perform at the plaza to get the chance to win an invite to the party so that Miguel can get the blessing.
They borrowed a guitar from one of Hector’s friends and headed to the plaza. Before they announce the winner of the contest, Miguel sees his family and panics. He and Hector are about to leave when Hector realizes that Miguel had another family that could have given him the blessing all along. Miguel gets mad at Hector for trying to take him to his family so he walks away from Hector. After throwing away his picture, Miguel decides that he is going to go to Ernesto on his own so he goes to the party, gets snuck in by the competition winners, and starts to look for Ernesto. When he spots Ernesto, he starts to sing so that he can get his attention, and when he finally gets his attention he tells him that he’s his great-great-grandson and that he needs to give him his blessing so Ernesto takes him from the party to give him the blessing but turns out that Ernesto was never Miguel’s great-great-grandfather but Hector is and Ernesto poisoned Hector to steal all of his songs from him and get famous. When Ernesto sees that Hector figures out what he did, he throws both Miguel and Hector into an extremely deep hole where they can’t get out, that’s when Imelda gets there with her spirit guide and gets them out.
Imelda takes both of them back to the rest of the family and they start to talk about all the things that Hector did and the fact that Coco is forgetting him. If Coco forgets him then he will never get to see her again so they make a plan to get his picture back. The family sneaks into Ernesto’s concert by pretending to be Frida Khalo, when they get into the show, they start to try to get the picture but security gets involved and that causes Imelda to get on stage and start to sing to get the picture. When Imelda gets the picture, she gives it to Miguel but then Ernesto shows up grabs Miguel, and throws him off the building, causing Miguel to drop the picture and not be able to get it back because Imelda’s spirit guide grabs him and takes him back to the stage where everyone is booing Ernesto because they just witnessed him confessing to murdering someone. Imelda gives Miguel her blessing and he gets back to the living world. Miguel immediately runs to Coco and tries to get her to remember Hector but his grandmother comes in and stops him. It is too late and Coco has already remembered her dad Hector. That made Hector able to see Coco again the following year and made the story of Hector the great musician be told.
All in all, Coco is a great movie about celebrating family, the dead, and Mexican culture that everyone should watch if they want a heartwarming story.
