There are four Lin-Manuel Miranda movie musicals out this year — including Disney’sEncanto, the adaptation of In The Heights, and his directorial debutTick, Tick…Boom!. But only one of them features a kinkajou. While Vivo is not quite the once-in-a-generation, culture-redefining masterpiece of, say, Hamilton, it has its moments.
Some of those moments come early on, when we’re treated to what you might call vintage Miranda: his now trademark blend of Broadway show tunes through a Latinx lens and mile-a-minute rat-a-tat rapping starts the film in boisterous, commanding style. As well as writing 11 original songs, Miranda voices the titular Vivo — a rainforest honey bear adopted by Cuban musician Andrés (Juan de Marcos González) as a musical partner. The opening number, which sees the pair busk in Havana’s Plaza Vieja, treats us to some of Miranda’s niftiest rhyming couplets (“We are part of a time-honoured tradition/of timing and precision/your finest musicians...”), his love of music, language and wordplay hurtling through the screen.
He is, as Vivo himself sings, faster than your average cat, and we’re reminded of why Miranda is still so in demand as an all-round writer and performer. Some of the songs are better than others — ‘Dance To The Beat Of My Own Drum’, performed brilliantly by newcomer Ynairaly Simo, is like a MIA hit single, all percussive power and discordant rapping; elsewhere, there are slushy, slight love songs.
Music is the strong point, and you never doubt that passion.
In a musical about music as much as anything, it makes sense that music is the strong point, and you never doubt that passion. The story between the songs is thin, though: Vivo’s mission to deliver a song to Andrés’ long-lost love is stretched to the limit, and the middle section sags with contrived peril and a lack of focus (Vivo meets a couple of lovesick spoonbills and a python, perhaps only to boost the talking animal quota). It gets into formulaic territory fast, too, with uptight characters learning obvious and familiar lessons about learning to let loose and live life.
But Sony Animation — on something of a hot streak at the moment after Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and The Mitchells Vs The Machines — keep the action lively and colourful, and while the standard of animation doesn’t match the inventiveness of those earlier films, there’s plenty of visual flourishes and panache to jazz things up, including a gorgeous retro 2D fantasy sequence, and the city of Miami rendered as a neon wonderland.
And even if the animation, and Miranda’s contributions, don’t quite elevate it above the usual summer holiday multiplex fodder for fidgety kids and tired parents, it does have Gloria Estefan duetting with a rapping kinkajou. How many films can claim that?
