Overflowing with color and visual splendor, "The Book of Life" is a wonderful animated story about love and friendship, good and evil, life and death.
It's also a celebration of Mexican culture and the shared heritage of director/co-writer Jorge R. Gutierrez and producer Guillermo del Toro.
In Mexico, "the center of the universe," it's Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, when people gather to remember loved ones who have passed on. Those deceased loved ones reside in The Land of the Remembered, an afterlife as vibrant as a fiesta. That's in contrast to The Land of the Forgotten, a desolate place for the dead who no longer have living relations keeping their memory alive.
The lovely La Muerte (voiced by Mexican star Kate del Castillo) rules benevolently over The Land of the Remembered, while her dark-side ex, Xibalba (voiced by Ron Perlman), has dominion over The Land of the Forgotten. Xibalba wants to switch jobs, so he makes a wager with La Muerte about the fates of three young friends — Maria, Manolo and Joaquin — in the town of San Angel.
Romantic Manolo (voiced by Mexican-born actor Diego Luna) dreams of singing, like his departed mother, Carmen (voiced by Ana de la Reguera), but he's pressured by his father, Carlos (voiced by Hector Elizondo), to take up the family tradition of bullfighting. The self-centered Joaquin (voiced by Channing Tatum) has made a reputation as a dashing fighting man. Which one Maria (voiced by Zoe Saldana) chooses to marry will determine whether La Muerte or Xibalba wins the wager — and Xibalba, who's backing Joaquin, is not above interfering with human affairs to win.
Gutierrez, who co-created Nickelodeon's cartoon series "El Tigre," creates a striking landscape of color and movement through the human world and two levels of the afterlife. The characters, inspired by wooden figurines of Mexican folk art, are expressive and quite adaptable to the story's mood shifts from comedy to action to romance.
And because Manolo is a singer, the movie serves up a rich song score featuring charming original tunes by composer Gustavo Santalolla ("Brokeback Mountain," "Babel") and lyricist Paul Williams ("The Muppet Movie") and kicky corrida-like covers of familiar songs such as Radiohead's "Creep" and Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait." (Luna sings, too, and he's pretty good.)
"The Book of Life" is one of this year's most inventive, delightful animated movies — and adds some Mexican spice to the regular Halloween ghost stories.
movies@sltrib.com
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'The Book of Life'
A love triangle extends into the afterlife in this colorful and inventive animated tale centering on the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, Oct. 17.
Rating • PG for mild action, rude humor, some thematic elements and brief scary images.
Running time • 95 minutes.
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