Virtuoso Vivo - review

⭐ ⭐

The animated, family-friendly musical adventure from director and co-writer Kirk DeMicco and co-director Brandon Jeffords, with music from Lin Manuel Miranda and Alex Lacamoire, VIVO is a fun and happy watch filled with messages of love and dreams, along with the power and strength that comes from music, yet fails to develop these ideas and loses its way when it turns into a road-trip movie with characters that are forgettable whilst being heavily condensed with unnecessary twists and turns.

It is made very clear that Lin Manuel Miranda's fingerprints are all over this movie. Not only is he the voice of the titular character, but the music he has written for it speaks volumes, placing this perfectly alongside the likes of In the Heights, and of course, Hamilton. The infectious latin-flavoured beats and rhythms, along with the fast rap and hip hop vocals provided create a modern yet culturally relevant blend that is extremely fun to listen to.

The animation absolutely must be praised. Not only is it incredibly drawn and beautifully portrayed, but the art style changes throughout the movie in order to represent time change, and the use of colour is unbelievably spectacular. This is some of the best use of colour within an animation I have ever seen. It not only perfectly matches the style of music, but also helps to convey the story in such a clever way. When reminiscing, the animation turns from the style that modern audiences are used to seeing, to a much more original and old fashioned way, hinting at the shift in time, which is such a clever indicator to use, especially when your movie is entirely aimed at young children.

The movie finds itself lost. It starts as a beautiful telling of a romance story between two forgotten lovers, but quickly turns into a quick-paced action drama that loses its romantic touch. You even sense this in the shift in musical tone. Whilst Miranda incorporated rap and hip hop into these latin standards, half way through, the music becomes entirely different and it feels very forced into something that it isn't. There are also a lot of unnecessary filler characters that are cringe-worthy and boring, and they advance the plot in no way at all.

This movie has themes of loss and grief which I believe are incredibly important themes that need to be discussed within children's movies, yet it almost seems like the story writers had forgotten about these plot points and every now and then just slip something in that reminds you of the loss the characters have faced. It also has themes of facing challenges and overcoming obstacles, yet these obstacles sent in place are so unbelievably elaborate that it loses its point and ends up just becoming another plot marker for Lin to write another hip hop beat. This movie is best at its core - a romantic retelling of a lost love, incorporating latin influenced music all through the eyes of a little Kinkajou, not a dramatic girl scout cookie selling, hip hop action movie that makes no logical sense when looking back.

This is absolutely a children's film; an incredibly generic, been there done that, safe movie. It is fun, the music is exciting, but don't rush to stream it, it is nothing you haven't seen before. Stream the music on Spotify before you stream the movie on Netflix, you will probably have a better time.

Stream it for the music, stay for the animation, but don't expect a great story.

If you have seen VIVO, what did you think? Let me know in the comments or come and chat on my socials.