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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

The fact that the most words that the author can spend on Coco are "it's pretty" says it all for me. With the later rant about Pixar deliberately setting up their beats to make their audience cry, Coco _MUST_ be part of the conversation there and it's conspicuously missing.

Coco is a wonderful film and probably the chief offender of the forced crying thing the author hates. Personally, I can't even think about the damn film without welling up and that's one of the movie's strengths. "Remember Me" is a wonderful, catchy earworm of a song that just refuses to leave my thoughts years later. And it's a fucking musical.

I. HATE. MUSICALS.

But Coco works for me by perfectly contextualizing the songs with the plot of the film. It's not musical numbers for the sake of it.

So yes, for a studio that has put out a masterpiece like that, its lesser efforts should be heavily criticized.

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OP talks as if it’s a trivially easy cheap cop out to make audience cry and feel good about it enough to go home happy. Dude, if a movie makes me happy cry I don’t give a rats ass what trick they used. They succeeded.

Yeah I don’t get it. I consider the few movies that made me feel a strong emotion to be my favourite ones. I thought that’s what cinema (and art in general) was about, making you feel something rather than indifference or boredom.

And it’s not like there isn’t a shitload of movies that try to make you cry and fail miserably, so I don't think there's a cheap trick.

Yeah, I think the author believes that if he recognizes the trick then it must be the case that pulling-off the trick was easy, and therefore cheap.

I went through a phase like that after discovering the TV Tropes wiki and saw all the patterns of my beloved childhood media laid bare. Then I made peace with it, and started enjoying the craft of casually hiding a Chekov’s gun in plain sight, etc.

I've seen a lot of critics complaining about using direction technique (editing, music, etc) to make audience cry, as if only the story, screenplay and acting is pure enough to be allowed to trigger these emotions.

On the other hand, no problem for triggering laughs. It's actually the reverse: you need good direction and good editing (because rhythm matters a lot) to make a joke impactful.

I've never really understood that. Is it shameful to be emotionally affected by a movie, even if you don't really like all of it?

I've seen that a lot about Spielberg movies, and more recently with J.A. Bayona (in particular with The Impossible and A Monster calls).

Sorry, Coco is not a musical. It’s a film about music - very different thing.

> I. HATE. MUSICALS.

Have you seen Sing, and/or Sing 2?

I avoided those movies initially because I thought they would be excruciatingly "singy". As it turned out, both movies were watchable imo, but I would never watch them again. Maybe that has something to do with my general disdain for full-fledged musicals, and how the movie was marketed as that. Even though the movies weren't actually full-fledged musicals, the marketing grossed me out enough that I think I have some sort of PTSD about watching them again.

Another couple of musicals that I think most people will like even if they generally don’t like musicals:

- Grease (1978) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0077631/

- Hair (1979) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0079261/

- The Blues Brothers (1980) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/

- The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0073629/

- Little Shop of Horrors (1986) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0091419/

I would add La La Land to the list. I don't like musicals, but this one was great.

La La Land is intentionally mirroring traditional musicals with very strong nods to both Hollywood golden age and Demy. Are you sure you don’t actually like musicals?

I tried to watch Tick Tick Boom for example, but it didn't resonate with me.

Additionally to the songs, La La Land has really great cinematography and I also liked that story arc. It's more movie with songs than songs in a movie.

If you are not completely opposed to the idea, you could try Singin’ in the rain or Swing time or even The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Old musicals have some kind of charm which you don’t really find in modern ones. They are such a huge part of cinema history.

These two are geek favorites but I hated them. To each their own I guess :)

Rockey Horror Picture show is heavily overrated. People only have such strong feelings for it because of the audience participation in showings.

No way, I've never seen a public viewing, I just like it because it's subversive against a genre I normally dislike. It's a musical that people who hate musicals can enjoy.

And it's catchy as fuck. Everybody knows the Time Warp even if you never did the silly dance.

I hate musicals and I didn’t enjoy this one. And I don’t know the time warp.

Don't miss out on "Meet the Feebles (1989)"

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0097858/

The Blues Brothers is one of the greatest movies of all time but it’s not a musical, it’s a movie about musicians. There are no examples of the characters communicating plot elements via lyrics they sing.

https://youtu.be/RTXszRHc0qs

And IMO also the James Brown scene in the church where they see the light?

And that Ray Charles demos the instruments in his store is the plot, but that the whole street is dancing along makes it a musical.

As a person who dislikes musicals, I concur that Grease is an amazing movie. The songs were relatable in an innocent way (i.e. finding summer love). The songs I hear in movies today... they aren't innocent. They talk about things like hating the person you love, and other similarly unhealthy concepts. It is a stark departure from the songs of old.

Grease’s songs are not innocent, only Sandy’s songs are, the men’s songs all about what teenage boys want out of teenage girls. Some of the lyrics are even cringeworthy now.

Note: I absolutely love Grease!

> what teenage boys want out of teenage girls

Is that any different to what teenage girls want out of teenage boys? ;)

Nope. What Grease helps show is how boys are allowed to be covert about it, while girls are expected to be more, shall we say, circumspect.

Also, in captain obvious mode, the concept of "reputation" moves in opposite directions between the two sexes. At least in the 70s.

In the year 2023? I'm not so sure.

Overt, no?

I also don't normally normally enjoy musicals, but I really liked La La Land.

I recommend these too:

Floyd Collins - about the trapped cave explorer and entrepreneur (cast album is on Spotify)[0]

Sunday in the Park with George - about an artist struggling to connect his artistic vision to the world (show is on YouTube, album on Spotify)[1]

Kiss me Kate - A group of actors put on The Taming of the Shrew - imo this is one of the greatest movie musicals ever made[2]

Musical theatre is a diverse and powerful medium, there's nothing else that has quite the same bandwidth to communicate emotion and ideas simultaneously

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins_(musical)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_in_the_Park_with_George

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Me,_Kate

As a (former?) musical hater La La Land is the one that did it for me.

I found coco utterly forgettable. On that point I suppose that I agree with the author

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