We stayed in the Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vt. Thanksgiving night. The town was completely deserted, we had reservations for the only restaurant in town that was serving dinner. Brattleboro was a ghost down. We love the Latchis, it is a funky and rock-solid art deco hotel in the middle of the hotel.

The hotel and theater were both built by a Greek immigrant family, and the murals and paintings around the theater are all centered on Greek drama and mythology.

We saw “Coco,” the new sappy but gorgeously animated ode to family, I am not sure I’ve ever seen a more beautiful animated film.

Maria and I were both turned off by the movie’s persisted touting of the idea that family is essential in life, and that we must always love our families no matter what they do to us or how we feel about them, or whether or not they support us in our lives.

More than half of the people I know and talk to dread the holidays, many have enormous problems with families, and it seems cruel to suggest that all families are ultimately happy and loving, and more important than anything else on the earth.

Maria and I both survived, in part, because we got away from our families. That’s why we go away on holidays as often as we can.

We love to go the Latchis, where comfortable rooms with views of the mountains and the Brattleboro downtown can run as low as $120. And the hotel architecture is amazing. The Latchis fell on hard times a while back, it has been loving restored.

I know there are many loving and  happy families, and that makes me happy.

But there are many unhappy, failed and dysfunctional families, and one day Disney might grace itself and us by making a movie that tells the whole truth about families, not just the marketing-a-movie family.

Coco’s life is nearly destroyed by his oblivious and hysterical family, yet the message of the film is that our families love us dearly and all is forgiven in the end. I feel badly for those children who see movies like that and wonder why their families are never in them.

We had a great time in Brattleboro, but I am sorry that the ghosts of our families come to haunt us, even there. Disney has finally come to see that women need to be portrayed different in the movies, they are no longer trembling stereotypes in crowns.

Perhaps one day, they will respect the true family in the same way. Our culture is changing in many ways, we can stop pretending that the family – itself changing in radical ways – is always a happy and loving place.

I liked the movie a lot, and I loved the theater. I am in awe of a world that took the trouble and spent the money to paint those murals on the walls of a movie in Southern Vermont.