I would do more Blu Ray reviews but A) the excellent site The-Numbers usually has it covered, and B) I had to sell 90% of my collection to be able to afford this one.
It's cool, I rarely even take the shrink wrap off of them. Or buy them.
Seriously, besides a used copy of Moana last month, my last Blu-Ray purchase was in 2016. And this review took so long to do, I ended up scouring the recently-added used movie collection at Books A Million and finding a 5$ DVD of one of my favorite movies - Rocknrolla, about three weeks later.
The duality of man.
My copy looks like this, cost me 28$ from FYE. 30$ with taxes. I have no idea where the taxes go to in this city.
You can get a version with an art book for about 24$ at Target, and I wish I had. FYE is a sham!
The inside plastic case has the same image, but I wish it looked like this mockup;
"visuel provisoire" probably means "just a mockup" in French.
There are several bonus features listed - and more!
- Commentary
- Deleted Scenes
- Path to Pixar; Coco
- The Music of Coco
Opening the case, there are two discs inside! I'm surprised, but for nearly 30$, should I be?
For 30$, there should be about ten discs in here.
One disc holds just the feature film, and repeats the image of Miguel, Dante, and Hector on the various cover arts. The other one holds the bonus features and an image of Pepita, Imelda's spirit guide.
Wait - there are three discs. I tried putting in the extras into my disc drive and wondered why it didn't work, until I realized that was one of the Blu-Ray discs.
Reviewing the packaging - it says there's a DVD in here too. So where is it?
Why, it's beneath the disc with the feature film and features the same three characters in a different pose. So it looks like you're not getting any screenshots from the BluRay features, sorry!
There's a code with a digital copy, and another advertisement for the Disney Movie Club, advertising two movies I don't want (Pirates 413543, Cars 3), one I own (Moana) and one I would like (The Lion King).
The Menu Screen is rather unremarkable, just the view you get when Miguel crosses the bridge for the first time. Hitting "Play All" gives us a short introduction by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina.
Every scene is storyboarded. And voiced by not the actors who would do so, but by Pixar employees. Some of them have clips on youtube, so I've provided them for you!
The first one is a scrapped opening ... of a song.
Watch this exclusive spirited opening musical number from #PixarCoco you didn't see: https://t.co/EKwL7RX8OE pic.twitter.com/Q2weNTWCja— USA TODAY Life (@usatodaylife) February 6, 2018
I'm glad it wasn't included because it's an info dump, and it isn't even clear to understand, but of course, this was just a storyboard.
The Way of the Riveras
Unkrich and Molina say that this was from a time where Coco was a full-fledged musical...where his music-hating family would break out into song.
It's not a really....interesting song, sorry to say. Also they keep calling Miguel "Marco". I wonder if that was a relic of early, early production, before someone said "Hey, maybe Disney doesn't need two boys named Marco wearing red hoodies."
Celebrity Tour
Molina says that this is, yet again, another scrapped concept where they wanted to introduce the rules of the Land of the Dead. It has Hector being a tour guide instead of a desperate, falling apart man.
Interestingly, Miguel would take the guitar into the Land of the Dead. Also, it took so long for this movie to be made that the boy voicing Miguel in this storyboard was not Anthony Gonzales.
There's a bus chase where Miguel is still called Marco.
The Rivera family is cursed in the afterlife to sing everything, and the curse could be broken by destroying the guitar that Marco needs to go back to the Land of the Living.
Everyone is just so overwhelmingly unlikeable in these storyboards, it's kind of amazing.
I mean, Marco commandeers the bus and ends up throwing his dead relatives off into the street! The final movie treats them a lot more respectfully than letting the bodies hit the floor, so to speak.
This is actually the first instance we see of the best character in the movie - Danté.
It's true.
The Family Fix returns to the old theme of the family singing curse, but now De La Cruz destroyed the guitar so Miguel can't return home.
To the Bridge has him returning to the Land of the Living by crossing the marigold bridge (in the film, he gets sent back by a blessing). This is the only action sequence that seems like we missed a really cool fight, but it also ends with our protagonist murdering a dead man.
In Conclusion: I can see why so many of those scenes and ideas were cut, it felt like a very amateur third-party animation studio's ideas. Needlessly violent.
There's a spot for trailers and promos. Now, I haven't opened a Blu-Ray in a long time, but..."Hey, you want to look at the advertising for the movie you own?" feels strange to me.
What isn't strange is the collection of featurettes!
- A Thousand Pictures A Day
- Where they go to Mexico to be accurate (and probably get some feedback on not throwing people from vehicles)
- You Got the Part!
- When they tell Anthony he is officially Miguel - I am always a sucker for these Disney specials where they tell these kids they got the leads. They're always so happy!
- Land of Our Ancestors
- The Real Guitar
- Paths to Pixar: Coco
- How to Make Papel Picado
- Those papery images that narrate the opening of the movie.
- Info
- Just says "Uh, these are for entertainment purposes only."
I love this. Coco is the only Disney film in memory where I have absolutely every vocal song saved to Spotify. I'm particularly fond of Proud Corazón. For the fully Spanish songs, the lyrics still elude me, but I have fun singing them.
In Conclusion:
30$ is kind of a stretch, but, again, Target has it for a reasonable price. Don't go to FYE.
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