Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles A couple of new players enter the animation arena! And they mean business! You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of The Book of Life! This Halloween... Whoa!!!! Please help me reunite with the love of my life. Stay here with us! We have epic fiestas everyday - and all you can eat churros!!! Comes an adventure... You so strong, Joaquin! Thanks, I work out a lot. Unlike anything you've ever seen! Tchkal is here!!! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?! 'Cause no one's that big, man! Haha! Hey buddy... Back when Walt Disney was alive, and pioneering the medium, animated movies were a painstaking process that took years to complete. And at every level you needed, more or less, someone who could DRAW. Now just ask any comic book publisher today, and they'll tell you that's a very small talent pool. I mean, you don't just have to be able to draw, but you need to able to animate motion! It's like everyone can draw a comic book cover, but very few can draw sequential art in other words, tell a story. And the reason I need to use comic books as an example is because hand-drawn animation has basically become extinct! Audience selection has chosen computer animation and thanks to video games and the copious amount of electronic devices we use in everyday life, there are far more people who are handy with a mouse than a pencil! Computer animation is a very unique process and not every step requires someone who can draw for a better look I hope you'll click here to check out my behind the scenes tour of Blue Sky Studios and how they go about making an animated movie. So with a much bigger talent pool, we now have many more players in the animation game! At this point you're familiar with them all! Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney Animation Blue Sky Studios, Sony Animation and Illumination Entertainment. Pretty darn crowded. But then just earlier this year, Canada's ToonBox Entertainment in partnership with South Korea had a big enough hit with The Nut Job that The Nut Job 2 is slated for January 2016! And just a few months earlier than that Reel FX got on the board with Free Birds now while there's no Free Birds 2 in development Reel FX is now back with The Book of Life and it's looking like a pretty solid entry. It's got an all star voice cast with Diego Luna, Channing Tatum and Zoe Saldana Behind the camera is Jorge Gutierrez moving up to feature films from television the Nickelodeon show "El Tigre The Adventures of Manny Rivera" just as Genndy Tartakovsky moved up from Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack to Hotel Transylvania for Sony Animation And producing the film as well as adding even more star power is celebrating Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro Hmm, while Walt Disney was a friend to South America himself back in those days Hollywood would never tailer a film to such a specific foreign demographic however not only has Hollywood become a far more global business with Mexico itself a top market but the latino audience in America has grown why just recently Eugenio Derbez's Instructions Not Included became the highest grossing spanish language film ever in the US with around forty-five million! Not bad! So, does the book of life represent where Hollywood animation is headed? Or is it just a nice try? Visually, The Book of Life is a stunning film and I had heard the director, Gutierrez, say that his goal in making the book of life was to create a film that was as beautiful as the concept art for it and I think he has 100% achieved that goal with the film. I also think this is a wonderful valentine to Mexican culture. I finally understand The Day of the Dead! And why it's such a popular and respected holiday in Mexico. Of course I'd heard of it before but I never quite understood exactly what was going on and this movie does a fantastic job of introducing it and celebrating it. And I also have to wonder, if just like China did with Kung Fu Panda from Dreamworks Animation if the Mexican film industry isn't going to look at this film and say "Hey, why didn't WE make that?" I also thought that the voice acting here was very, very good. Now, of course, everyone did a good job but the real stand out was, I have to say, Channing Tatum because this role allowed him to do so many things that you would THINK would be outside his comfort zone but totally are in his comfort zone! He just really goes for it, he has no ego, no fear of looking foolish and as a result he doesn't come off as looking foolish at all! Now of course Diego Luna and Zoe Saldana, to be fair have more serious, straightforward roles they're our hero and heroine so they don't have as much room to play as Tatum does so that's why I think maybe they don't stand out quite as much - it's just because of the material. But despite those three things the visuals, the Mexican culture and the voice work for some reason The Book of Life didn't totally click for me. And I thought about it and thought about it and I decide the reason is because it skews very young. Now for very young viewers it's a wonderful film because it has so many great lessons. Lessons I think you'd want any younger viewer to be exposed to in many different areas! It covers a surprising number of life lessons in one single film but I guess it is called The Book of Life. And again as I said those visuals are so good and it's so nice to see another culture celebrated by Hollywood that older viewers who happen to see the movie will certainly have something to distract them from a very traditional and simplistic story. Now as some of you I'm sure will bring up I had said that Frozen skewed pretty young as well but that was popular with people of all ages! And again both films had, I think, what are very important messages and I'm curious to see if the messages incorporated in this movie will help it maybe do better as well even though the storytelling might not be up to par. But at the same time the messages here, I think, aren't as groundbreaking as those in Frozen which had a lot to do with girl power. There are some girl power elements here but in the more traditional sense. But I think the big difference between Frozen and The Book of Life is the music. I think we can all agree that Frozen owes a great deal of its success to its music and while there are a handful of original songs here they are - none of them are showstoppers in The Book of Life and none of them are even memorable! In fact, as someone who's not a big music fan well I enjoy music obviously but I'm not - I don't have a lot of knowledge about music so I couldn't even pick out all of the original songs for you because they do use some other famous songs they re-use them y'know almost like a cover band and when they did that, when I could recognize a popular song that had originated somewhere else it even went so far as to take me out of the story. So very close - The Book of Life comes very close to greatness and it is very good on multiple levels but I don't think it's an instant classic. I would say that Pixar can go ahead and still make that Dia De Los Muertos movie they have planned I think that's still something they can pursue especially since I think it will be much darker and more sophisticated which is kind of Pixar's specialty at this point. However, I would like to point out that because there's so much talent obviously now in the animation pool thanks to computer animation that everybody has to step up their game across the board including unfortunately this movie because the bar is just getting really high. So, Book of Life, if you have younger viewers that you have, y'know, in your family or that you know of that you'd like to take to the movie I think this is going to be a great thing for you to go and do If you're interesting in Mexican culture be it your own or something you want to be exposed to