The Book of Life

The rulers of light and darkness in the afterlife make a bet as to which of two childhood sweethearts (voiced by Diego Luna and Channing Tatum) will win the hand of a Mexican girl (Zoe Saldana). The script for this animated phantasmagoria by Jorge R. Gutierrez and Douglas Langdale, like the movie's riotous design, is often as cluttered and kitschy as a roadside curio stand, and it deeply indulges producer Guillermo del Toro's penchant for the grotesque. Yet it all works, using the background of Mexico's Día de los Muertos holiday as the setting for a complicated story with echoes of legends, myths and fairy tales from around the world, from Orpheus to Sleeping Beauty to The Wizard of Oz. Additional voices include Kate del Castillo, Ron Perlman, Christina Applegate, Ice Cube, Hector Elizondo and Danny Trejo.