Movie Thoughts: Vivo (2021)

• Released: 6 August 2021
• Directed by: Kirk DeMicco, Brandon Jeffords
  
• Running time: 1 h 35 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

A musical kinkajou and a kid travel across the Americas in order to deliver an old man's love song to a famous singer. 

My Thoughts

This is one of these movies that I barely saw any promotional material for on my timeline. Same with Wish Dragon, though probably even more so with that one. I must say, Sony Pictures Animation really is on fire this year. They've released three good movies in 2021, with one more coming up. 

Vivo is overall just a cute and fun movie. It doesn't feel huge or spectacular, but it definitely is very enjoyable. The story of this kinkajou trying to deliver his deceased owner's love letter to this famous singer was a fun concept. At first I didn't enjoy the idea of an obnoxious kid tagalong, but Gabi was thankfully rather charming. She does get a lot sometimes, but not overly so.

This is also a musical, and while there weren't really any songs that stood out to me, the soundtrack was definitely good. I didn't expect this going in, but it's very good. The musical sequences also got some really creative and good-looking visuals going on, so that was definitely neat.

I did have some minor nitpicks with the movie, the most notable one being some of the character designs. 90% of them look fine, but there's just those very few that look a tiny bit off. I think it's the eyes that are a bit too close together for them. Also, while Vivo looked fine in and of himself, I do think he really doesn't resemble his actual species much. He looks much closer to a monkey than a kinkajou if you ask me.

I'm also not a big fan of one of the main antagonists for a portion of the movie being nature activists. Like, yeah, they can be pretentious, but damn, they do bring up valid points regarding keeping exotic animals as species and not keeping their safety in mind, only for the movie to completely dismiss them thereafter. They were misguided, yes, but there's no need to outright villainize them for a portion of the movie.

Overall, I did genuinely like this movie a lot. Not as much as The Mitchells vs The Machines, but I liked it a lot. I'm really curious to see what Sony Pictures Animation will release next!