The Live The Adventure Letter 
Miguel is a gifted and energetic boy with big dreams of becoming a famous singer just like his idol, the late Ernesto de la Cruz.
Miguel’s family, though, doesn’t share his passion for music. In fact, they hate it. That’s because Miguel’s great-great grandfather – also a singer — traded his family for his musical career, and they haven’t seen him since. All forms of music are now banned in the home.
That’s too bad, because Miguel has a knack for playing the guitar – a talent he discovered while sneaking away from home. In fact, he shows so much promise that some townsmen are encouraging him to enter the upcoming talent show.
What will he do? Finally, he decides: He will run away and take part in the show.
“I don’t want to be in this family!” he tells everyone.
There’s just one problem with his plan: He doesn’t own a guitar. So, Miguel breaks into the town’s own “Ernesto de la Cruz memorial” and steals the memorial’s guitar — a deed he rationalizes as OK because he and the famous singer apparently are related.
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Oh yeah — all of this is taking place on the night of Día de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”), a Mexican holiday in which families build small-but-elaborate shrines to deceased ancestors so as to commune with and remember their relatives.
When Miguel strums his stolen guitar, magic happens. He is transported into the Land of the Dead, a beautiful megacity full of walking-and-talking skeletons (who wear clothes). He even meets some of his relatives! Perhaps if Miguel can find Ernesto de la Cruz himself, the famous singer-relative will bless Miguel’s musical career.
The Disney/Pixar movie Coco (PG) opens in the U.S. this weekend, one month after it debuted in Mexico and became the highest-grossing film ever in that nation. It stars Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel, Gael García Bernalas as his skeleton friend Hector, and Benjamin Bratt (Despicable Me 2) as de la Cruz.
Coco comes from the same studio (Pixar) that gave us such family-friendly flicks as the Cars and Toys Story series, Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. But Coco is no innocent children’s movie – especially when viewed through a Christian lens.
Here’s what parents should know:
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