"The Book of Life" is a Mexican-accented kids' cartoon so colorful and unconventionally dazzling it almost reinvents the art form. As pretty as a just-punctured piñata, endlessly inventive, warm and traditional, it serves up Mexican culture in a riot of color and mariachi-flavored music.
The tale is told by a museum tour guide trying to impress a raucous bunch of American school kids. Mary Beth (Christina Applegate) recounts a love story built around El Día de los Muertos, Mexico's Day of the Dead. When that story begins, the computer-animated style switches from quirky, bigheaded, plastic-looking adults and kids to a bizarre, wooden-puppet world of the past, the Mexican village of San Angel.
That's where Maria (Zoe Saldana), a feisty girl, was pursued by Manolo (Diego Luna), the bullfighter's son who only wants to sing and play the guitar, and Joaquin (Channing Tatum), the war hero's son who only wants to live up to his late father's fame.
Their courtship duel becomes a wager in the afterlife, where La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and Xibalba (Ron Perlman) face off in the "Land of the Remembered."
Manolo becomes a bullfighter who refuses to "finish" the bull, Joaquin becomes a hero who doesn't fear death, thanks to a magic medal Xibalba slips him, and Maria grows up to become a proto-feminist who won't be an easy catch for either of them.
Joaquin collects medals to win Maria, Manolo sings. Luna's cover versions of songs from Elvis to Radiohead and Mumford & Sons add romance to the proceedings.
The production design, by Paul Sullivan and Simon Vladimir Varela, is stunning — puppets that have the feel of sanded and embossed wood, and characters with oversized heads that Picasso would have recognized.
Director and co-writer Jorge R. Gutierrez keeps this simple story on the move, and producer Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" touch is felt throughout. The film is adorned with all manner of clever jokes, gorgeous sight gags and little flourishes.
