Check it out – the land of the dead looks really fun! Perhaps Mexico is owed a little credit here — every culture I’m attached to treats death as a curse replete with pain, somber and reverence. On Día de Los Muertos, death is celebrated with bright colors and fun – hey, there! Have a fiesta with past friends and relatives! Have a blissful communion among the living and living-challenged. I dig that. When I die, I hope the rare thoughts of me include smiles. And with that, well, bring on Mexican mythology, hombres!
Sometimes, just sometimes, the ‘conservation of characters’ method of screenwriting, and especially animated screenwriting, does nobody any favors. You have this beautiful girl, Maria (voice of Zoe Saldana). You go out of your way to show her grow into a beautiful independent woman, and yet she is destined to marry exactly one of two boys she has met in her lifetime: singer/bullfighter Manolo (Diego Luna) or fighter/bullslinger Joaquin (Channing Tatum). Score one for liberated Latinos, huh?
Well, hey, this is a cartoon after all and it’s a cultural step to get something unapologetically Mexican into the American narrative in the first place, so maybe we give some leeway. 
Manolo and Joaquin are, indeed, destined to battle for the same hand. However, the two are just pawns in this giant game – rival deities La Muerte (Kate Del Castillo), ruler in the land of underdeveloped screenplays, and Xibalba (Ron Perlman), ruler in the land of hideous animation, wage control of their respective worlds on who Maria marries. And then Xibalba cheats. That’s pretty much it. You can tell from the run time –less the modern day museum cover story– that there wasn’t much here.
The animation in The Book of Life is odd. Most of it looks like a child’s bead and glue gun project gone horribly wrong. Luckily for The Book of Life, we’re all still reeling from the animation in Boxtrolls, hence the collections of misshapen painted dice and huge nostrils offered by Book look positively charming compared to your average Boxtroll. Now, while Book of Life wasn’t terribly attractive, I was enthused by the very colorful land of the dead. I like the idea of an afterworld being a treat rather than a trick. Why shouldn’t the dead party 24/7? What have they got to be sore about? In fact, if you can keep the crappy animation to a minimum, I’d like to know more about this “Mexico” of which you speak.
♪Oh I wonder, wonder
What’s with The Book of Life?
Chapter One, there’s an issue
Dos hombres y un mujer
Chapter Two we establish
Both boys don’t easy scare
In Chapter Three we remember
There has to be a plot
So Chapter Four brings us
The Land of Those Forgot
In Chapter Five there’s shiny
Wall-to-wall sequins
In Chapter Six I wonder
Where are the folks with sins?
Chapter Seven makes me
Wonder what’s on youtube
But Chapter Eight I’m “saved.”
“thank god. it’s Ice Cube.” ♫
Rated PG, 95 Minutes
D: Jorge R. Gutierrez
W: Jorge R. Gutierrez, Douglas Langdale
Genre: Mexican mythology
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Underrepresented Hispanics
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Rhinophobes. (Fear of noses)
♪ Parody inspired by “The Book of Love”
