Chico and Rita [Blu-ray]

I have been a big fan of Mariscals comic art since I first came across it years back and have been looking forward to seeing this for a long time especially as I have recently become a major Jazz convert.

The package contains a very good quite moving featurette about the making of the film which is not only helpful in understanding the film but also helped me clarify for me the only area where I can criticise the film. The animation was stongly based on real live action filming of scenes beforehand and does suffer from the same drawbacks of digital animation in that the characters tend to glide and lack life unlike most 2d drawn animation where exaggeration and input of the animators personality actually gives characters more life than most digimation. In someways the less realistic simplified Mariscal animals in his usual comicart are far more Jazz in spirit than these human characters photoshop type qualities.

On now to the strengths of the film. Mariscals backgrounds are stunning.40's Cuba and New York come to life in beautiful intricate detail. And the music. Here they have been spot on in not choosing to feature real life recordings of the Jazz musicians featured, instead they commisioned Jazz musicians to interpret the styles of those musicians which brings the score to life in a way archive material would have never achieved. I absolutely loved the Ben Webster scene and it was not surprising to hear the Sax player they used was an old friend of Ben Webster. The interplay between visuals and music is easily up to the standards of the best of Scorcese and Powell and Pressburger.

The 15 certificate I felt was a bit over the top for "graphic sex-scenes" although my wife disaggrees and thinks that 15 rating was correct where I think 12 would have been appropriate in relation to children; certainly there is nothing in there that would make me feel unconfortable waching this with my parents.

I've been meaning to get hold of this since I first saw it advertised at cinemas a couple of years ago - having a Latin American girlfriend called Rita may have had something to do with that, but all the positive reviews here and elsewhere certainly helped.

Finally seeing it, though, is an enormous disappointment.

First, the quality of the DVD presentation. As mentioned by another reviewer here, the subtitles are hardcoded, so there's no way to see it without them (quite distracting if you speak Spanish) ... and of course that also means there aren't, for example, Spanish subtitles for viewers of this bilingual film who don't speak English.

Furthermore, seemingly arbitrary choices have been made as to which bits of the Spanish to bother subtitling - it's particularly noticeable with the musical numbers, as apparently the producers feel that nobody wants to know more than the first couple of lines of any of the songs.

The animation itself is also poor. It's a jarring mix of CGI and hand-drawn animation with wildly different frame rates, and while some of the hand-drawn stuff is fairly good (the animators clearly enjoy drawing beautiful women), at times it's surprisingly amateurish. I never want to see Chico's fingers again, that's for sure.

But the worst thing - the really, really disappointing thing - is the writing.

The story is not merely predictable but painfully clichéd, and the characterizations are stereotypical at best (and nonexistent at the all-too-often worst).

To the extent that there are characters at all, Chico is a machista manchild who we're apparently supposed to like for some reason, and Rita is just annoying. Ramón (their manager and Chico's treacherous "friend") would probably be the worst - he's nothing more than a ragbag of latino stereotypes - if it weren't for the existence of Chano, who appears to have been wedged into the plot so that they could draw a gangster with a gold tooth.

Oh, and they've also got Evil White Guy(TM). No, really.

I suppose I ought to say something nice about it: the music is good. But, you know, you could buy some CDs instead. I recommend Tito Puente.

I am grateful I watched it for one reason alone: I bought it with the intention of giving it to Rita (the real, complex human being I mentioned at the start of this review, not the silly caricature of a Latina presented in the film) so that we could see it together, and having taken the precaution of watching it by myself first, I can save us both the embarrassment of sitting through it side by side.

I saw this film at the cinema and was amazed how a cartoon could capture me so completely! The animation and drawing (sorry, not very technical about these things!) really draw you in and you begin to feel it is real. In places I had tears in my eyes! If you've been to Havana it's lovely to try to spot places you know in the animation. It's a really sensitively made film and I loved it so I've put my pre-order in! Great music of course... The previous reviewer has said about the story line so I won't. As it's set around the time of the revolution it does show how awful it must have been if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and separated from loved ones (hope that doesn't give too much away!). See it!!!!