Encanto

Director: Jared Bush, Bryon Howard, Charise Castro Smith

Writer: Jared Bush, Bryon Howard, Charise Castro Smith, Nancy Kruse, Lin-Manuel Miranda

Starring: Stephanie Beatriz, Maria Cecilia Botero, John Leguizamo, Mauro Castillo, Jessica Darrow, Diane Guerrero

Reason for watching: new Pixar movie means I’m watching it in the theater.

Number of times I’ve watched it: first time viewing

***

We all have a family history. The personal slights that have lasted years. The trauma of parents leaving. The bad memories of siblings and cousins that have hurt us. The pressure built up over decades of expectations of what one person ought to be. It can really complicate familial relationships. Sometimes keeping it down and not talking about it will keep the issues from bubbling up, but weeding out the issues themselves is really what will fix everything in the end. Encanto might be the best Disney movie of recent years because of what it wants to teach us that.

Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) is a member of the Madrigal family living in a magical area of Colombia. When each member of her family becomes of age they are given a special gift, but she is the first member of the family to grow up without one. This leads her to constantly get into shenanigans as she is trying to compensate for her lack of a gift. In addition, her family has been keeping a secret that a vision her uncle Bruno (John Leguizamo) once had about Mirabel’s future importance to the family. As Mirabel unravels the mystery of her uncle’s vision, it affects the connections between her family and the structural integrity of her home. Particularly, Mirabel’s sisters, Luisa (Jessica Darrow) and Isabela (Diane Guerrero), both have gifts that put a lot of pressure on her and her family. The matriarch of the family, Abuela Alma (Maria Cecilia Botero), wants to lead the family in a strong direction, but her relationship with Mirabel is strained as Mirabel’s actions seem to get in the way of Abuela’s plans. Mirabel will have to figure out what the vision her uncle had meant and try to keep her family from falling apart.

One thing that animated movies have over live-action is the ability to adjust the appearance of their world. Animated films can look like this or like this, and both can still be considered a part of the same genre. Knowing this Disney has created an animation style that has crossed over a number of their movies. Moana, Zootopia, Frozen, Tangled, and Coco have used this similar style of animation. Arguably one could point out this shows a lack of originality in their animators, but the style is so expressive and life-like that it conveys a sense of warmth and familiarity across multiple films. It certainly helps with a complicated emotional movie like Encanto.

What is a new thing for Disney (or at least for a while) is having good songs in the movie. Now getting Lin-Manuel Miranda to write songs for your movie will lend it a certain style and a level of quality. But it definitely works in a story like this when a fun atmosphere and songs with an amount of emotional power. Particularly Miranda shines in the songs he wrote for Luisa and Isabela. They convey the emotional toll their gifts have placed on them and how it has affected them and their relationships with the rest of the family.

Going back to the nature of a family, one of the things that really makes a great family is a unique group of individuals, which the Madrigal family has in spades thanks to the gifts each of them has been given. It makes for fun interactions to see them using their skills to help one another and do cool things. Luisa lifting a half dozen donkeys at once or seeing their cousin Dolores (Adassa) eavesdropping on everyone with her enhanced hearing ability makes for very entertaining scenes. As the movie goes on and the family works together it is special to see them helping each other with their gifts.

All in all, it makes for a very strong entry into the ocean of Disney’s animated movie library.

8/10

Until I see another one