When to Visit Coco Without Seeing the Blood-Curdling Short That Everyone Hates
Over the weekend, I decided to take two four-year-olds — my daughter and her friend — to watch the new Pixar movie, Coco . But before leaving the house, I accidentally read the tweets. Many, many tweets. There have been warnings, protests, and outrageous petitions for the 21-minute short film Frozen being shown ahead of the film. It’s called Olaf’s Frozen Adventure , and it’s bad according to those who lived it. Painful. “In addition to portraying the worst elements of Christmas’s rough commercialization, the songs were lackluster, the plot painfully churned out, and Olaf was annoying like shit,” one viewer tweeted . Another wrote , “Even my 6 year old girl was like,“ How LONG is that ??! “Many said they were so confused, worried or annoyed that they almost left the theater.
Some were even offended by the decision to combine the short film Frozen with Coco , and I can understand why. In honor of Dia de Muertos , a Mexican celebration of lost loved ones, Coco feels like a rare Hollywood triumph for Hispanic audiences who grew up feeding on the stereotypes of their culture on their screens. To get an accurate picture of the film, Coco’s creative team made several trips to Mexico , interviewing families about their traditions, and absorbing the sights and sounds of cemeteries, churches and squares. The result, according to Latin American film critics, is a gift. On Remezcla, Vanessa Erazo writes that Coco is “a blissful embrace of acceptance at a time when the very existence of Latinos in this country is criminalized.” Yet it has been speculated that Olaf’s Frozen Adventure , originally intended for the ABC television series, was shown in front of Coco in part because executives feared the type of feature film would not sell to American audiences.
If you think a bad short film Frozen will ruin your experience of Coco , skip it. Slate reckons it’s best to arrive about 37 minutes after the scheduled screening time to avoid movie trailers, Olaf’s show, and a one-minute clip in which co-directors Coco Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina talk about how proud they are of the film. We arrived about 30 minutes after our 10:20 am, showing the time, and the women at the ticket office warned us that if we watch Frozen , we need to be sure that we are indeed in the right cinema. I think there were many complaints. One movie theater chain in Mexico stopped showing the short Olaf as groups called for it to be removed on Facebook .
We caught the end of Olaf’s Frozen Adventure and the few minutes we saw were – I admit – cute. (But then again, the four-year-old girls I was with belong to the exact demographics of Frozen , and I’ve already been brainwashed to complacency after hearing “Let It Go” 372 times. And yes, the new Frozen 2019 sequel is out now. .) But Coco is absolutely wonderful and you should do your best to prepare yourself to be in a good mood from watching movies. This could mean doing some calculations to stay away from the singing snowman.
Update 12/4/2017: Disney will remove Olaf’s Frozen Adventure from Coco’s screenings starting Friday, December 8, Mashable reported .