The Book of Life

While visiting a museum, a group of five troubled youth, on detention, are won over by their tour guide, Mary Beth. Part of what wins them over is the story she tells from the Book of Life, which contains all the stories of the world, both true and made-up. The story she tells centers on the Day of the Dead in San Angel, Mexico - the center of the universe - of three childhood best friends, strong-willed Maria Posada, Joaquin Mondragon Jr., who likes to show he's a man by sporting a fake mustache without truly knowing what it means to be a man, and guitar-playing Manolo Sanchez, the offspring of the town's general, a deceased military hero and a bullfighter respectively. Even at this age, both Joaquin and Manolo are in love with Maria, each knowing he would like eventually to marry her. They are separated when Maria's father sends her to Europe for school to learn to be a lady. By the time Maria returns to San Angel as a young woman, Joaquin has become a military hero like his father, and Manolo has become a bullfighter like all his Sanchez ancestors, male and female. While Manolo showed his aptitude for bullfighting at a young age, his heart still remains music, singing and playing his guitar, and not with bullfighting. Each still pines for Maria as his wife. What they are unaware of is that two leaders of the afterlife, estranged wife and husband, La Muerte, ruler of the Land of the Remembered, and Xibalba, ruler of the Land of the Forgotten, long ago made a wager on which of the two will marry Maria, the outcome which will have a profound effect not only on Maria, Joaquin and Manolo's joint lives, but the course of San Angel, which is constantly under threat by evil Chakal, and the world. What La Muerte is further unaware of is that Xibalba is taking underhanded measures to win, which also affects Maria, Joaquin and Manolo's live and possible deaths.