The film stars the voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renée Victor, Ana Ofelia Murguía, and Edward James Olmos.

The story follows a 12-year-old boy named Miguel (Gonzalez) who is accidentally transported to the Land of the Dead, where he seeks the help of his deceased musician great-great-grandfather to return him to his family and reverse their ban on music.

The film received acclaim for its animation, voice acting, music, visuals, emotional story, and respect for Mexican culture.

In the Mexican town of Santa Cecilia, a young woman named Imelda marries a man who eventually leaves her and their daughter Coco to pursue a music career.

Despite the family's continued ban on music, Miguel secretly loves it and teaches himself to play guitar by watching videos of his idol, the late musician Ernesto de la Cruz.

Ernesto's crimes are exposed to the audience, who quickly turn on him, and he is crushed by a falling bell (mirroring his fate in real life), although Héctor's photograph is lost in the chaos.

She shares that she kept the torn piece of the photo with Héctor's face, then tells her family stories about her father, preserving his memory and existence in the Land of the Dead.

One year later, Miguel shows his new baby sister, Socorro, the family ofrenda, now displaying photos of Héctor and the recently deceased Coco.

Pepita is a cat whose alebrije form gives her the head, torso, and front paws of a jaguar, the horns of a ram, the wings and hindlegs of an eagle, and the tail of an iguana.

[26] A week later, Disney canceled the attempt, with the official statement saying that the "trademark filing was intended to protect any title for our film and related activities.

[29] Earlier versions of the film had different universe rules regarding how Miguel (originally called Marco) would get back from the land of the dead; in one case he physically had to run across the bridge.

[34] In 2016, the Coco team made an official announcement about the cast, which revealed that Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Renée Victor, and Anthony Gonzalez would voice the characters.

Bert Berry, the film's art director, said that aged building materials were used to depict Santa Cecilia "as an older charming city".

Michael K. O'Brien, the film's effects supervisor, called it "a huge technical challenge" for the animation team, but referred to it as something "so visually exciting with petals dripping from it; it was a massive artistic undertaking.

[3] According to art director Daniel Arraiga, the animators "had to figure out how to give [the skeletons] personality without skin, muscles, noses or even lips" and that they "played with shapes and did a lot of paintings.

To create the skeletons, several additional controls were used, as they "needed to move in ways that humans don't," according to character modeling and articulation lead Michael Honse.

[44] Scott Mendelson of Forbes praised the trailer as "a terrific old-school Pixar sell, mostly consisting of a single sequence and offering just the barest hint of what's to come.

[70][71] It fell to number six in its fifth weekend, due to competition from three new releases—Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Pitch Perfect 3, and The Greatest Showman—despite a small drop again; it grossed $2.8 million on Christmas Day.

[78] In China, Coco finished number one at the weekend box office, with a three-day total of $18.2 million, making it the second-highest opening ever for a Disney or Pixar animated release in that market, behind Zootopia.

The consensus reads; "Coco's rich visual pleasures are matched by a thoughtful narrative that takes a family-friendly—and deeply affecting—approach to questions of culture, family, life, and death.

"[92] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

[67] Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter said, "At every imaginative juncture, the filmmakers (the screenplay is credited to Pixar veteran Molina and Matthew Aldrich) create a richly woven tapestry of comprehensively researched storytelling, fully dimensional characters, clever touches both tender and amusingly macabre, and vivid, beautifully textured visuals.

"[94] Robert Abele of TheWrap praised the film, saying: "If an animated movie is going to offer children a way to process death, it's hard to envision a more spirited, touching and breezily entertaining example than Coco.

"[95] In his review for Variety, Peter Debruge wrote, "In any case, it works: Coco's creators clearly had the perfect ending in mind before they'd nailed down all the other details, and though the movie drags in places, and features a few too many childish gags... the story's sincere emotional resolution earns the sobs it's sure to inspire."

"[97] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film 3.5 out of four, calling it a "loving tribute to Mexican culture", while praising the animation, vocal performances (particularly of Gonzalez, García Bernal, and Bratt), and its emotional and thematic tone and depth.

[98] The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips called the film "vividly good, beautifully animated", praising Giacchino's musical score and the songs, as well as drawing a comparison to the emotional tone of Inside Out.

[100] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times found the film to be "full of life" and deemed it "a bouncy and heart-tugging adventure" while lauding the vocal performances as "fantastic" and "first-rate".

[109] In 2018, several Mexican news outlets reported that Disney and Pixar had failed to disclose that the producers for Coco had based the character of Mamá Coco on María de la Salud Ramírez Caballero from the Purépecha village of Santa Fe de la Laguna, "a town of Purépecha potters in Quiroga, Michoacán.

"[111] In a report by Telemundo, residents and artisans of Santa Fe de la Laguna recognized that the attention Salud has received from people throughout the world has increased tourism for the town.

"[113] While the production team at Disney and Pixar have recognized that they "based the Rivera family—a multigenerational matriarchy headed by Miguel's formidable grandmother—on real-world families with whom they embedded while visiting the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guanajuato between 2011 and 2013", they have not acknowledged Salud's contribution to the film.