Encanto Review

With original music by Lin-Manuel “get ready to hum this for the next couple years” Miranda.

There’s no particular reason why Disney should still be the king of children’s movies. There are other highly successful children’s film studios, there are thousands of wonderful children’s books out there dying to be adapted for the big screen, and plenty of directors who know what makes a movie work. But somehow, nine iconic children’s movies out of ten seem to be Disney movies.

Encanto is certain to be another well-remembered hit from Disney. It capitalizes on all of Disney’s strengths as an animation studio while bringing in amazing influences, though it hits some flat notes along the way.

The Premise: The Family Madrigal are truly #blessed. They have a literal miracle in the form of a candle that built them a living house, a town safe from the dangers of the world, and a family gifted with miraculous powers: Julieta can heal you with her cooking, Pepa can control the weather, Bruno (WE DON’T TALK ABOUT BRUNO)… ahem. Various cousins and grandchildren have super-hearing, flower power, super strength, and shape-shifting.

Also, Mirabel is there. She has no magical gifts or powers. Everyone in the entire town knows that she is the only un-magical child in the most magical family of all time. But it’s fine. It’s FINE.

It’s not fine.

When the family magic seems to weaken, Mirabel tries to uncover family secrets and rescue the family magic that passed her by, facing her own doubts and worse, those her family has about her…

I’m going to come back to the story in a minute, because while it is a bold choice, it’s also the only part of the film that I really have a grievance with.

First, I want to cover three things that the movie does impossibly well:

Visually, this is far and away Disney’s best-looking computer-animated movie. I don’t think it’s a secret that Disney tends to produce movies based around the latest animation technology they’ve managed to pin down. Tangled was, in large part, to show off their hair-animation. Frozen showed what Disney could do with ice and snow. Moana showed just how advanced Disney’s water physics had become. With Encanto, it seems Disney just decided to show off that they can do everything: beautiful light effects, plants, living furniture, water, animals, sand, weather, EVERYTHING. The movie moves pretty fast, so it might take a little time to notice just how spectacular everything looks, and how many hints and jokes are hidden in the background of a musical number that showcases thirty different specialties of animation.

And you’ll really have a hard time paying attention to those details because you’ll be busy vibe-ing to incredibly catchy songs like “The Family Madrigal,” “Surface Pressure,” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” Lin-Manuel Miranda is insanely good at composing fast, catch-y, lyric dense music, and we all know it, and he got to show off again. I have a minor misgiving about “Surface Pressure,” which is a terrific song that doesn’t really fit the setting and the rest of the soundtrack (much like “Shiny” in Moana: a complete bop, but so different from everything else it just sticks out), but I appear to be the only one.

I also have to give Disney props for taking so much inspiration for this story from the magical realism genre, South/Latin America’s greatest gift to the literary world. Magical realism is a very special genre that includes fantastical elements (usually symbolic in some way) that the characters acknowledge are magical, but accept out right. The family Madrigal has a miracle candle, and everybody in town is like, “Dope. Love that candle. You guys keep on doing what you’re doing.” It reminds me very much of One Hundred Years of Solitude, where a daughter is born so pretty that she simply ascends into heaven in front of a crowd of people, and everyone is disappointed, but basically shrugs it off. Remedios was just that beautiful. Of course she flew to heaven. The inspiration shines through and creates a connection to some of the most creative literature ever written. If you want to learn more, I recommend The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

Mirabel’s lack of gift could be a stand-in for a lot of things: disability, being a part of an “academically gifted” family but not being recognized, LGBTQ+ acceptance, etc. There are many ways in which we say that everyone is important that are undermined by the way we treat one another, and a fantastical story about being perceived as “just ordinary” is going to hit a lot of people close to home.

While I admire that telling that kind of story, though, I don’t think the film’s story fires on all cylinders. This is not a film where a magical quest to an island/castle/wizard can fix things. The central conflict is tied to how the family treats one another, and that is a gutsier story to tell, and also a harder one to pull off in a children’s film time-limit. Certain characters treat one another like garbage, and then one song later, the audience is supposed to forgive those faults as though they were nothing. The story doesn’t have time to slow down, so sprinting towards that ending leaves some characters feeling under-developed or un-redeemed.

Still, Encanto is a work of art that invites multiple viewings and conversations about the characters more than most other Disney animated films, and I do truly believe that while this one may not reach the pop-culture domination that Frozen did, I think it will remain a beloved part of the Disney Canon. 4 miracles out of 5. Now streaming on Disney Plus.