Disney Pixar’s “Coco” hit theaters during the Thanksgiving weekend and while the subject matter would’ve been a bit more relevant to the season of Halloween since the movie is about the Mexican holiday “Dia de los Muertos” (or "Day of the Dead") I think a Thanksgiving release was also appropriate considering the themes of family present in the movie

First and most importantly, I thought “Coco” was an absolutely beautiful movie, the animation and the characters so basically it’s all amazing and worth your ticket price. “Coco” tells the story of Miguel Rivera, an aspiring musician who’s told by his entire family that music is evil because of the family’s lineage. Miguel’s great-great-grandfather left his family to pursue music and left the rest of the family very bitter, making things difficult for Miguel when he wants to perform music for the Day of the Dead festival.

Eventually, Miguel gets sucked into the land of the dead and reconnects with deceased members of his family. That’s pretty much all I want to give away regarding the plot because everything that follows is so perfectly executed that you should see it for yourself.

The voice cast is great and you can tell Pixar really went all-out to portray Mexican culture as best they could. This movie was released a month earlier in Mexico to raving reviews, showing that the target audience was more than happy with how Pixar portrayed their culture. This is also Pixar’s first venue into musicals but I hesitate to call this a full-on “musical" like Disney & Pixar initially announced. This movie is about music and there are plenty of songs that are sung but it’s not like “Oh I’m sad, I’m going to sing about how sad I am.” It's unlike your typical Disney musical, the music is very organic to the story and the songs only play during concerts and such. The music sounds authentic and at times it's very moving, especially near the end of the movie. There wasn’t a dry-eye in the theater during the last 30 minutes, the music paired with the story being told was a perfect recipe for tears.

The movie went to some surprisingly dark places too, there were one or two moments where the story got very serious and mature... however the story is told so well throughout that these plot devices come so natural and wouldn't really unsettle kids (the movie's target audience.) As an adult watching it, the many twists that are revealed near the end were intriguing and while the movie is aimed at children there's plenty in there for an adult to enjoy.

There is a huge complaint I need to talk about but it has nothing to do with “Coco” specifically. It's concerning the way this movie was presented in theaters and Disney’s lack of confidence in the movie. Before every Pixar movie there’s a little short film created by other Pixar animators that usually last about 3-5 minutes, and most of the time the short is just as good as the actual movie. For “Coco” however, Disney thought to do something a little bit different.

Disney had a 22-minute “Frozen” short they were planning to air in December as a Christmas special on ABC but they were worried that “Coco” wouldn’t get a big turnout at the theater so they stuck the entire TV special before the movie. This idea was absolutely horrendous. You already have to sit through 20 minutes of previews before the movie and now you have to wait ANOTHER 20 minutes before “Coco.” The popularity of “Frozen” doesn’t excuse this, kids in my theater were complaining to their parents asking “when is Coco going to start?" It's annoying long.

I don’t necessarily dislike the movie “Frozen.” I thought it was a fine movie when it came out and even though it became very overhyped in the following months I still think it holds up. I also think “Frozen 2” will be a huge box-office hit, unfortunately, Disney is relying on “Frozen” a bit too much... the franchise has been moving way too fast in my opinion, so far all these little spin-offs have had annoying references to the first movie rather than coming up with new things. Disney seemed so confident in their new franchise that they thought it was the only way to get people into the theaters for “Coco.” Which is such an insult to "Coco."

I feel like it’s wrong to even call this a “Frozen short” because it’s not short at all, it’s legitimately 20 minutes, there are parts where you can obviously tell that it’s meant to cut away to commercial. Remember how I said “Coco” was released a month early in Mexico? Well, attendees of theaters in Mexico were so mad at the length of the “short” that most of the big theaters in Mexico actually removed it, instead playing it at the end of the movie. In the theater I was in people were so confused and thought they walked into the wrong theater, some people even walked out. I think this is absolutely horrible because that’s a few less people seeing the beauty and heartfelt story of “Coco.”

I don’t want to tell you to wait for the home video release of “Coco” to see it because I want this movie to do exceptionally well at the box office, but this mostly harmless "Frozen" project just didn't belong in the theaters and it's seriously messing things up. I would honestly suggest getting to the theater 30-40 minutes AFTER the time the theater designates as “the start” because you’ll skip the previews and most of the “short.” Don’t let this snow fort stop you from seeing “Coco,” it’s an amazing movie and is now most definitely in my top 5 Pixar movies, that’s some high honor right there.

Update: So I have a bit of BREAKING NEWS I was able to add in here before publication. It turns out Disney has heard all this backlash against the runtime of "Olaf's Frozen Adventure" and as of 12/08 it won't be played in front of "Coco" screenings anymore. It's a Christmas miracle!