Coco 
 
 Watch the final trailer for Disney/Pixar?s Coco. On November 22, it?s showtime. Tickets for Coco are on sale now: bit.ly/CocoTix 
 
 Pixar animated adventure featuring the voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt and Alanna Noel Ubach. Directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina. Opens Wednesday at GTA theatres. 105 minutes. G Animated Disney/Pixar adventure Coco arrives with joyous Latin music celebrating Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities, and there’s a real sense of occasion to it — and also one of relief. Pixar’s 19th film is its first with a minority lead character: Anthony Gonzalez’s Miguel, a 12-year-old in the tiny old town of Santa Cecilia, where he longs to be a musician in “the only family in Mexico that hates music.” He’s about to discover how far dreams — and nightmares — can roam. 
 
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 Coco is also a brilliant original creation by the ’toon titan, although it borrows some supernatural inspiration from Spirited Away by Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki, a favourite of Pixar animators. It’s a joy to see the company doing something genuinely creative again, after a pair of cash-in sequels (Cars 3, Finding Dory) and a factory-issue children’s story (The Good Dinosaur). Pixar looked for a while there as if it was content to embrace mediocrity as long as it kept multiplexes full. Coco has great bones, and not just the ones belonging to the animated skeletons whom Miguel is about to meet. It’s co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, who previously worked together on Toy Story 3, one of Pixar’s grandest achievements. The story begins with Miguel lamenting his misfortune of being born into a cobbler’s family. He longs to be a guitar-strumming troubadour like his hero, Ernesto de la Cruz, who is voiced to showboating perfection by Benjamin Bratt. Ernesto exited the world after a tragic stage accident, while another musician brought misery to Miguel’s family. This led to stories about a curse against the family — hence the ban on music, enforced by the watchful Abuelita (Renee Victor). But boys will be ninos, and Miguel’s curious peregrinations land him in the Land of the Dead, located just across a golden bridge strewn with marigolds. Turns out it even has its only customs department run by officious skeletons, who really don’t require X-rays to see everything. 
 
 Hector the skeleton, voiced by Gael Garcia Bernal, right, and Miguel, voiced by Anthony Gonzalez, appear in a scene from the animated film, Coco. ( Pixar / AP ) 
 
 Forced to mimic the dead in other to walk among them, Miguel adopts a disguise and takes up with a precocious pooch and a sad-eyed soul named Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal). They strive to right wrongs, make music and return to the land of the living to be with Miguel’s family, among them the film’s titular Mama Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia), his frail great-grandmother. 
 
 Every step of the way in Coco is a visual and sonic delight. There’s a shout-out to famed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo that includes someone getting arrested for “impersonating a unibrow.” The action moves swiftly but still manages to picks up amusing details, like an artist sketching a skeleton that on the other side of the golden bridge would surely be a nude model. The dialogue blends Spanish and English as naturally as rum and Coke. The music is another highlight, especially the heartfelt ballad “Remember Me,” written by Frozen’s Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, that is sure to be an awards contender this season. Frozen is also recalled in the accompanying animated Disney short Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, featuring the clownish snowman from that 2013 megahit, but here magic gets put on ice. The songs are so anodyne, one of them refers to Christmas not by name by simply as “that time of year.” It needs some of the heat of Coco.
– A 12-year-old boy with music in his heart finds himself transported to the Land of the Dead in Pixar's first feature film with a minority lead character, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina. Giving the film a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, critics are singing its praises: "Effervescent, clever and thoughtful," Coco "is Pixar's best effort since 2015's Inside Out and also one of its "most gorgeously animated outings in some time," writes Brian Truitt at USA Today. It will "makes you laugh and cry in equal doses." It might have you singing, too. Among Pixar's most musical films, Coco sees 13-year-old Anthony Gonzalez shine as main character Miguel. "The kid can sing like nobody's business," writes Truitt. Justin Chang argues the film is good, not great, missing "the sense of filmmakers boldly and brilliantly conquering new terrain" as in Inside Out. Viewers might also object to the film's "breathless velocity," he writes at the Los Angeles Times. But there are things to appreciate, too, like "a non-white human protagoninst" and "a showstopping musical climax and an ending all but guaranteed to tickle your tear ducts," Chang writes. "Progress could certainly look worse." "The action moves swiftly but still manages to picks up amusing details" in this "brilliant original creation," Peter Howell writes at the Toronto Star. He admires much, including dialogue that "blends Spanish and English as naturally as rum and Coke." But it's the sights and sounds of music that take the film to another level, says Howell. "Every step of the way in Coco is a visual and sonic delight." "Despite a slow start … Coco finds its groove" on a "delightfully nonlinear path" through "fanciful new worlds," writes Stephanie Merry at the Washington Post. The "stunning visuals" cannot be missed. "Some of the animation in Coco is so detailed that it looks photorealistic," she writes. But mostly, the film feels fresh as it celebrates "a culture that's so often overlooked by the movie industry," addresses death "in a lighthearted way," and tries its hand at dark comedy to much success, Merry writes.