The Book of Life, Jorge, R. Gutierrez 2014
By Ali Tenenbaum
This is one I didn’t quite get. Starts off strong, seems original and jumps right into a historical, fun and interesting story that hasn’t been told in this format… then it loses me.The movie becomes formulaic, boring and borders on racist.Am I allowed to say that knowing that the director is Mexican? Perhaps the stereotypical silly, heavily accented grandmother character is based on his actual grandmother and he wants to represent real life people in these depictions? I am not sure what they are trying to pull off here, the animation and the story start off innovative and end up dull, repetitive and monotonous.
It is literally perfect for kids and grandmas (as both are represented heavily). Not so much for me but maybe I am just a crotchety in-betweener who has seen too much mediocre animation lately.
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