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The fact that the most words that the author can spend on Coco are "it's pretty" says it all for me. With the later rant about Pixar deliberately setting up the
by busterarm 3y ago
The fact that the most words that the author can spend on Coco are "it's pretty" says it all for me. With the later rant about Pixar deliberately setting up their beats to make their audience cry, Coco _MUST_ be part of the conversation there and it's conspicuously missing.
Coco is a wonderful film and probably the chief offender of the forced crying thing the author hates. Personally, I can't even think about the damn film without welling up and that's one of the movie's strengths. "Remember Me" is a wonderful, catchy earworm of a song that just refuses to leave my thoughts years later. And it's a fucking musical.
I. HATE. MUSICALS.
But Coco works for me by perfectly contextualizing the songs with the plot of the film. It's not musical numbers for the sake of it.
So yes, for a studio that has put out a masterpiece like that, its lesser efforts should be heavily criticized.
- justinclift 3y ago> I. HATE. MUSICALS. Have you seen Sing, and/or Sing 2?
- dumpsterdiver 3y agoI avoided those movies initially because I thought they would be excruciatingly "singy". As it turned out, both movies were watchable imo, but I would never watch them again. Maybe that has something to do with my general disdain for full-fledged musicals, and how the movie was marketed as that. Even though the movies weren't actually full-fledged musicals, the marketing grossed me out enough that I think I have some sort of PTSD about watching them again.
- codetrotter 3y agoAnother couple of musicals that I think most people will like even if they generally don’t like musicals: - Grease (1978) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0077631/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0077631/ - Hair (1979) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0079261/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0079261/
- Scarblac 3y ago- The Blues Brothers (1980) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/
- CPLX 3y agoThe Blues Brothers is one of the greatest movies of all time but it’s not a musical, it’s a movie about musicians. There are no examples of the characters communicating plot elements via lyrics they sing.
- Scarblac 3y agohttps://youtu.be/RTXszRHc0qs https://youtu.be/RTXszRHc0qs And IMO also the James Brown scene in the church where they see the light? And that Ray Charles demos the instruments in his store is the plot, but that the whole street is dancing along makes it a musical.
- glandium 3y ago- The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0073629/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0073629/ - Little Shop of Horrors (1986) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0091419/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0091419/
- myspy 3y agoI would add La La Land to the list. I don't like musicals, but this one was great.
- WastingMyTime89 3y agoLa La Land is intentionally mirroring traditional musicals with very strong nods to both Hollywood golden age and Demy. Are you sure you don’t actually like musicals?
- 3y ago
- auxym 3y agoI also don't normally normally enjoy musicals, but I really liked La La Land.
- splatzone 3y agoI recommend these too: Floyd Collins - about the trapped cave explorer and entrepreneur (cast album is on Spotify)[0] Sunday in the Park with George - about an artist struggling to connect his artistic vision to the world (show is on YouTube, album on Spotify)[1] Kiss me Kate - A group of actors put on The Taming of the Shrew - imo this is one of the greatest movie musicals ever made[2] Musical theatre is a diverse and powerful medium, there's nothing else that has quite the same bandwidth to communicate emotion and ideas simultaneously [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins_(musical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins_(musical) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_in_the_Park_with_George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_in_the_Park_with_George [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Me,_Kate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Me,_Kate
- Xenoamorphous 3y agoAs a (former?) musical hater La La Land is the one that did it for me.
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoSorry, Coco is not a musical. It’s a film about music - very different thing.
- ramraj07 3y agoOP talks as if it’s a trivially easy cheap cop out to make audience cry and feel good about it enough to go home happy. Dude, if a movie makes me happy cry I don’t give a rats ass what trick they used. They succeeded.
- Xenoamorphous 3y agoYeah I don’t get it. I consider the few movies that made me feel a strong emotion to be my favourite ones. I thought that’s what cinema (and art in general) was about, making you feel something rather than indifference or boredom. And it’s not like there isn’t a shitload of movies that try to make you cry and fail miserably, so I don't think there's a cheap trick.
- pohl 3y agoYeah, I think the author believes that if he recognizes the trick then it must be the case that pulling-off the trick was easy, and therefore cheap. I went through a phase like that after discovering the TV Tropes wiki and saw all the patterns of my beloved childhood media laid bare. Then I made peace with it, and started enjoying the craft of casually hiding a Chekov’s gun in plain sight, etc.
- martius 3y agoI've seen a lot of critics complaining about using direction technique (editing, music, etc) to make audience cry, as if only the story, screenplay and acting is pure enough to be allowed to trigger these emotions. On the other hand, no problem for triggering laughs. It's actually the reverse: you need good direction and good editing (because rhythm matters a lot) to make a joke impactful. I've never really understood that. Is it shameful to be emotionally affected by a movie, even if you don't really like all of it? I've seen that a lot about Spielberg movies, and more recently with J.A. Bayona (in particular with The Impossible and A Monster calls).
- wodenokoto 3y agoI found coco utterly forgettable. On that point I suppose that I agree with the author