Book of Life Review Part 2
There were a couple other annoyances. The Candlemaker was another “let’s force the audience out of whimsical Mexico and into a movie theater that smells like feet” character and he did it every time he opened his mouth. 
He was as out of place as Megatron in a line up of kids picking teams for dodge ball and by the end of the film contributed nothing more than another set of fingernails scraping the blackboard in my head (image courtesy of the Transformers t shirt category). The entire film was much longer on comic relief then it needed to be up to and including the big bad bandito everyone was terrified of.
The story itself was kind of meh too. The whole thing played out as a lovers tiff between La Muerta, the queen of the Land of the Remembered, and Xibalba, the king of the Land of the Forgotten (played, BTW, by none other than Ron M-F-ing Perlman. That part was cool) and was about as interesting as watching a typical couple fight and purposefully leave the toilet seat up or down to annoy each other. Again as a kids movie I know I can’t expect Donny Darko level complexity or story quality but a little more motivation for anyone to do anything would have been appreciated.
For all that I can’t say it’s not worth watching. I’m sure your kids will love it and it’s pretty enough to keep you entertained as well. The visuals are truly stunning and I absolutely loved the animation. It has a couple of cool messages about loving and cherishing your relatives (although when you think about it there is also a pretty grim message about what will happen to us all once we are forgotten) and ancestors while being true to your own nature. There are a couple of good action scenes and the fight at the end bordered on excitement.
(continued)
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