I watched this one for the first time several years ago. It’s definitely a great movie and a great story, but it makes me cry at the end every time. The music is fantastic. The animation is very realistic. The characters act like they’re supposed to. It’s just a great movie.
Miguel longs to be a musician, but his grandmother forbids music. His great grandfather was a musician and abandoned the family. Ever since, they’ve made shoes and music is strictly forbidden. Day of the dead is coming up and Miguel wants to enter the talent show, but he doesn’t have a guitar. He breaks into the mausoleum of the local town hero thinking it’s the shrine to his great grandfather. He takes the guitar but ends up in the city of the dead. His ancestors have to help him get back to the land of the living before sunrise or he’ll be stuck there forever.
Along the way, he meets Hector. Hector hasn’t been allowed to visit his relatives because nobody puts his picture on their offrenda. He’s in danger of being completely forgotten which means the final death. He agrees to help Miguel get to his great great grandfather in hopes of getting his blessing to return and to be a musician.
In the end, Hector was his great great grandfather. The truth of his disappearance comes to light, and he is able to send Miguel back home. Miguel sings a special song to his mama Coco (his great grandmother). She remembers her father, Hector, again just in time. While Coco dies before the next day of the dead, the family puts Hector’s picture with everyone else’s on the offrenda.
I suppose I cry at the end of the movie because I have a lot of close family members who died way before their time. I wish Day of the Dead was actually real and that they could come back and visit, but I know it’s not. I also think about how I won’t ever have kids so my sister’s memory will die with me. It’s a good cry, though. I come away from the movie feeling a lot of warmth and love.
