Vivo is now streaming on Netflix.
From the moment it starts, Vivo wants to pull you in with the kind of aesthetics we've come to expect from Disney/Pixar — photorealistic backgrounds and production design, and the same clay-like character designs the studio has churned out for the past decade or so — before unveiling a bold, striking, and at times experimental animated musical with a powerful message. Vivo unfortunately loses the beat about halfway through, but it's still a solid showing in Sony Pictures Animation's post-Into the Spider-Verse renaissance. Plus, fans of Lin-Manuel Miranda's music will still get enough catchy songs to keep them busy until his next project.
But most importantly, Vivo is absolutely gorgeous. Right out of the gate, director Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) and his team of animators bring the vibrant colors of Havana, Cuba, to life in a way that's similar to the beauty of Makoto Shinkai's Your Name. This is in no small part due to visual consultant Roger Deakins, who gives Vivo a blend of photorealistic lighting and cinematography in the same way he did with the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. The result is an exhilarating opening number full of life and personality. Breathtaking production design and more cartoonish characters collide with Miranda's guajira-meets-hip-hop lyrics and composer Alex Lacamoire's dazzling melody. As the camera dances around the titular kinkajou and his human friend Andrés (Juan de Marcos), circling around them and simulating a grandiose Broadway stage production, Vivo fully captures our attention for what's to come.
The plot is simple enough: Vivo sets off on his own to deliver a special song Andrés wrote for his first musical partner/love, Marta Sandoval (music legend Gloria Estefan), who is preparing for her final concert in Miami. Vivo hitches a ride with Andrés' rebellious, purple-haired niece Gabi (standout performer Ynairaly Simo), and the two embark on a wild adventure. Simo's Gabi completely steals the show the moment she shows up on screen, and that's reflected in the visuals, too, as she disrupts Vivo's quiet island life with her own modern one. Vivo's warm color palette is quickly taken over by Gabi's neon-lit punk-lite pastel aesthetic. Simo's vocal performance, meanwhile, breathes enough life and personality into the character to elevate her beyond the archetypes of the young girl animated protagonists that came before her. Her song, "My Own Drum," is a percussion-heavy hip-hop grrrl anthem that, much like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs the Machines, uses eclectic animation and 2D art styles to drive home Gabi's unruly energy.
And that's really the best thing about the film: seeing a team of animators pull from various art and animation styles to give each musical number its own distinct look. While Vivo's musical scenes are founded in the present, reflecting his desire for things to stay exactly as they are, Gabi's take a wild turn, coming in with stuffed animals that turn into giant Thanksgiving Day parade-style balloons while the ghosts of her dead pets turn into a marching band. All the while, the Andrés-centric ballads are visually influenced by Cuban album covers and travel posters from the '50s and '60s, with the Art Deco giving the sequences a spirited touch of nostalgia to match Andrés' ruminations about past opportunities and lost loves.
For a while, Vivo tries to tell a poignant story of grief and the precious march of time, with a message of taking chances as they come instead of waiting for the right time. Likewise, Gabi also hides a grief-stricken vulnerability behind her outgoing, tough girl personality, as the multigenerational Afro-Cuban family tries to deal with grief each in their own way. Sadly, the movie quickly pivots away from the emotional part of the story in favor of a kid-friendly adventure that plays things safe. The script, by DeMicco and In the Heights writer Quiara Alegría Hudes, comes to an almost complete halt once the action moves to the Everglades for a detour that takes up a big part of the runtime for no discernible reason. We are introduced to more characters like two dull spoonbills (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry and Nicole Byer, who get an equally dull love song), an unnecessary villainous anaconda played by Michael Rooker, and a trio of eco-conscious girl scouts that are just here to stall the plot and kill the momentum.
Vivo doesn't offer much that we haven't seen in animated musicals for the past 30 years, with a paper-thin story that becomes tolerable thanks to a parade of catchy songs infused with Latin rhythms (though some are definitely better than others). Its saving grace is in the visuals, which distinguishes this adventure from Disney's assembly line of animated musicals with a myriad of styles and lively designs that continues to cement Sony Pictures Animation as the most exciting studio to watch for American animated movies.