Vivo: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Animated Kid-fest is Sparkly, Crafted… But Just Kind of OK
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the playwright/songwriter of the 21st century’s best-known musical Hamilton, seems to be everywhere you look and listen these days.
The film version of his musical, In the Heights, was released in June. He executive-produced a recent documentary on Rita Moreno. His upcoming directorial debut tick, tick… BOOM! — based on the semi-autobiographical musical by the late Jonathan Larsen (Rent) — comes out later this year. He’s also the songwriter for the upcoming Disney animated film Encanto, as well as this week’s kid-friendly Vivo.
This Sony-Netflix animated children’s film about a music-loving kinkajou (a tree-dwelling creature related to a raccoon) named Vivo (voiced by Miranda) is more a stopgap than a step forward, though it certainly looks good and has plenty of craft chops behind it.
Co-directed by Brandon Jeffords (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2) and The Croods’ Kirk DeMicco (who co-wrote the script with In The Heights cowriter Quiara Alegría Hudes), the film’s production design is by Carlos Zaragoza (Pan’s Labyrinth), who uses different visual styles keyed to location. To wit: A retro oil-on-velvet painting for street scenes in Havana, storybook watercolours for suburban Florida, and zigzag neon lights for Miami.
All this is fitted around a bubbling Cuban-based musical score (by Miranda and Alex Lacamoire) that alternates between dance numbers and ballads about love and ambition, with all that trademark L-MM sincerity (“Just when I thought we were done for/My new friend gave me an encore,”). If the Miranda musical touches are getting familiar, they’re still a lot fresher than the script here, yet another story of a pet animal on a mission and its special bond with a lonely child.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
When we first meet Vivo, looking like an organ-grinder’s monkey, he’s passing the hat and serving as multi-instrumental sidekick for his elderly guitarist-singer Andrés (Juan de Marcos of the Buena Vista Social Club), as they busk for passersby in Havana’s Plaza Vieja. Later, Andrés receives a letter from his old flame and performing partner Marta (Gloria Estefan), who would like him to join her for her retirement concert in Miami. It falls to Vivo to make the trip without Andrés to deliver a musical love letter, written on sheet music, for Marta.
To make the trip, Vivo manages to hide in the luggage of Andrés’ American tourist niece, Gabi (Ynairaly Simo), a punky, purple-haired bespectacled pre-teen, who lives with her widowed mom in Key West. A determined non-conformist, Gabi resists the efforts by her mother (Zoe Saldana) to get her to conform by joining the Sand Dollar Scouts, a sort of Girl Guides troupe, represented by a trio of preppie busy bodies. Gabi’s signature song is girl-power chant “My Own Drum,” which is also the major earworm of the soundtrack.
Vivo peaks during its the lively first third and then keeps going with diminishing returns. In the movie’s flattest, though action-oriented, sequence, Gabi, along with Vivo, make a trek across the Florida everglades, followed by the Sand Dollar Scouts. They get separated, reunite, and encounter a noise-sensitive python (Michael Rooker) and a pair of lovestruck spoonbills (Brian Tyree Henry and Nicole Byer).
Songs periodically break out between chases, and Gabi and Vivo match lyrics and melody before the anti-climactic meeting with Marta and the nightclub lights of Miami. In the movie’s defense, the generic familiarity may prove an advantage for Vivo’s function as a babysitting tool, which Netflix can provide more consistently and cheaper than the big-screen experience.
Vivo. Directed by Kirk DeMicco and Brandon Jeffords. Written by Kirk DeMicco and Quiera Allegria Hudes. Voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ynairaly Simo, Zoe Saldana, Juan de Marcos González, Gloria Estefan, and Michael Rooker. Available on Netflix from Aug. 6.