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If you go see "Coco" (which I really enjoyed) try to show up late to miss the short, which features the Frozen characters. At 6 minutes it might have been cute (even with it's attempt at a lesson) but it's well over 20-minutes and was godawful torture. Even my kids (who both love Frozen) were getting frustrated with it. WTF were they thinking!?

cdnchris wrote:If you go see "Coco" (which I really enjoyed) try to show up late to miss the short, which features the Frozen characters. At 6 minutes it might have been cute (even with it's attempt at a lesson) but it's well over 20-minutes and was godawful torture. Even my kids (who both love Frozen) were getting frustrated with it. WTF were they thinking!?

This is pretty much the reaction I've seen from almost everyone online. I imagine Disney would like to keep Frozen in the public consciousness as much as they can but this doesn't seem to have gone over all that well.

Coco is great though.

In the UK (and Guernsey - we're technically not in the UK), because we're not getting Coco until next year, we had a special release of the Olaf short this weekend (only) along with a re-release of Frozen. My Mother-In-Law drew the short straw and took my 6 year old daughter - both seemed to enjoy it...

I like Frozen for everything but the snowman, why would anyone focus on him? #askingthebigquestions

I like Frozen as well, despite having seen it more times with my daughter than i care to admit. Maybe going in and knowing what you're getting into it isn't bad (though that's hard for me to believe because it was pretty obnoxious) but the biggest problem was the length. Maybe we're just used to the 6 or so minute shorts that usually precede the movie and suddenly throwing a 22-minute one at us out of the blue threw us off. We were all ready for the damn thing to end and it kept going.

As to Coco it was ultimately worth sitting through the "short." It's a gorgeous looking film and I was surprised at it's willingness to take on death, and though it does it through cartoon skeletons I didn't think it sugarcoated it all that much, even forcing you to watch the protagonist's great grand mother pretty much deteriorate throughout. The big plot development can be guessed early on but it still packed a fairly big emotional punch when it came to the moment.

Loved, loved, loved Coco. My favorite animated film of the year. It was incredibly beautiful and funny. Loved seeing cameos from Cantinflas, Negrete and Infante, as a lot of the film's music and comedy was inspired by these 3 icons of Mexican culture.

On the other hand, didn't care either way for the Frozen short, although is not as bad as I was expecting. Don't understand why Disney decided to tag this short with Coco as they are completely the opposite. Also, don't understand why Disney released Coco now instead of pairing it around Halloween/Dia de los Muertos date. Disney should just have release the Frozen short as a yearly ABC special and had more people see it without the backlash they are getting now.

dx23 wrote:Disney should just have release the Frozen short as a yearly ABC special and had more people see it without the backlash they are getting now.

Apparently this was their original intent but tacked it onto Coco thinking it might boost its opening weekend. Some of the marketing I saw did go out if it's way to mention the short so it seems plausible.

cdnchris wrote: Apparently this was their original intent but tacked it onto Coco thinking it might boost its opening weekend. Some of the marketing I saw did go out if it's way to mention the short so it seems plausible.

Did Disney had little faith in this Pixar film? My impression was that it had strong screen tests among all audiences and that it was expected to perform well.

The cynic in me wonders if maybe they thought the right wing of this country would stay away explicitly because of the very high level of animosity toward Hispanics in this country at the moment - but all those people have Frozen shit all over their house... so maybe this will wrangle them.

dx23 wrote:Also, don't understand why Disney released Coco now instead of pairing it around Halloween/Dia de los Muertos date. Disney should just have release the Frozen short as a yearly ABC special and had more people see it without the backlash they are getting now.

Pixar's late year releases have traditionally been around Thanksgiving. Clearly they don't want to mess with that formula.

Ribs wrote:Due to substantial demand, Olaf's Frozen Adventure will be dropped from screenings of Coco beginning this coming Friday.

Yep. There was no short to speak of at the screening I attended, making this the only other Pixar feature to not have this trait since the original "Toy Story." (I'm personally thankful, as I've managed to avoid any "Frozen" material so far despite my niece's obsession with it 8-[ ). There was just a brief message from the directors and producers regarding the work that went into creating the film and a personal thank you for attending. I'm sure the whole cultural difference may play a part in the film not doing as well as it could. Nonetheless, as with "Inside Out," it makes you wish Pixar would just just drop this increased tend of merely making sequels/prequels of what they've already done (after "The Incredibles 2," anyway, whose original film left its door the most wide open for a sequel in the first place -- and, admittedly, "Inside Out" almost certainly left more room to explore as Riley continues to age). I also felt this film was a very good way to initiate a conversation with young children about the concept of death without resorting to the cheap trick of invoking religion.

The Day of the Dead is a religious holiday.

A religious holiday which in the movie is represented via ritual observations with metaphysical import, no less. Though interestingly they do kind of downplay the explicit Catholicism of it.

Incidentally, I really loved this movie- it nails the thing of universality through specificity, where even if the traditions it's showing are totally foreign to you, the emotional weight behind them comes through with beautiful clarity- my four year old nephew really liked it, and I was outright bawling in the theater. Hopefully this and Inside Out will be a template for the kind of films Pixar can make going forward, at least when they aren't grimly pushing out sequels.