COCO

JUDGING BY the earliest returns, Pixar might well have a winning film on its hands this Thanksgiving. “Coco,” the studio’s new film, which centers on a boy’s musical journey within Mexico’s Day of the Dead/Día de Muertos rituals and customs, has the first wave of top reviewers waxing mostly positive, especially glowing over the effects (naturally), the emotion (to be expected) and what the movie represents in terms of diversity. This is the 19th Pixar film, but the first to feature multiple characters of color in prominent roles. “Coco,” directed by Lee Unkrich and co-directed by Adrian Molina, is also reassuringly textured in how it appropriates cultural symbols and folklore, critics say. The film (opening Nov. 22) delivers “a universal message about family bonds while adhering to folkloric traditions free of the watering down or whitewashing that have often typified Americanized appropriations of cultural heritage,” writes Michael Rechtshaffen for the Hollywood Reporter. Amid recent casting controversies involving white actors in such comics adaptations as “Doctor Strange” and “Ghost in the Shell,” THR also notes that “a peerless voice cast [is] populated almost entirely by Mexican and Latino actors.”