Disney Animation Studios tends to be very reliable. Generally, you know what you’re getting going in and it’s not often that one of their films truly surprises -it’s been a long time since they’ve produced a Hunchback of Notre Dame or a Lilo & Stitch. But reliability has historically been Disney’s friend, and it’s animated films are among it’s only products where that can be a strength. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin -all are quite similar movies, but they’re all great. And it’s something I was keenly aware of watching Encanto. Not much in it was all that new or unique, its’ aesthetics and humour and pacing and plotting could be exchanged for those of just about any Disney film since Tangled. And yet I was enjoying myself in all its’ little mediocrities and familiar tenets.
That’s not to say Encanto is no different than any other Disney movies of late, nor that it’s actually a bad movie that I’m giving brownie points to in spite of creative shortcomings. Indeed it is a great talent for a filmmaker or a studio to cultivate such a precise command over a particular formula or archetype that it can be redressed and rewritten over and over and lose little of its’ effectiveness. Disney Animation knows what they’re doing, how to balance their pervading criterion with fresh elements and ideas. And Encanto has a wealth of those, whether or not they’re front and centre all the time.
The story is set in a secluded community within a Colombian valley, at the centre of which is the Madrigal family whose matriarch founded the habitation with the aid of a magic candle (Encanto) that has imbued each member of her family since with unique ‘gifts’ -superpowers essentially. Only granddaughter Mirabel failed to receive one, and is something of a low-key family embarrassment because of it. Of course, she is the one destined to save them all when signs begin to point to the influence of the Encanto fading. Mirabel is quite a compelling protagonist from the outset, if for nothing else, her atypical look. Obviously she’s Disney’s first Latina heroine, but she’s also got big round glasses, a rounder face and less idealized figure, and styled shoulder-length curly hair -nothing like the standard look of Disney branding even up to Raya and the Last Dragon earlier this year. Voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, she’s also a fairly funny character, written in the mold of an Anna from Frozen but with often stronger jokes (though Disney’s tepid, patronizing comedy does rear its’ head several times). Altogether, she’s a breath of fresh air for the brand, even as blatant a corporate appeal to modern young audiences as she is. Disney’s counting on her design not being soon forgotten.
The movie has fun with is’ other characters as well as it builds a superhero family deftly more interesting than the Eternals. There’s an Aunt who has minor weather control powers, often seen with a storm cloud hanging over her, a cousin who has highly sensitive hearing and another who can shape-shift. Perhaps the best is Luisa (Jessica Darrow), Mirabel’s sister, demonstrating this movie’s take on super-strength by just carrying around donkeys, churches, and the weight of her responsibilities and self-doubt.
It’s actually the principal theme of the movie, carrying over into multiple characters: the pressure of expectations. Luisa as well as Mirabel’s other sister Isabela (Diane Guerrero), who can create beautiful plant-life, are burdened with certain standards and perceptions they have to live up to. The gifts have created this high degree of importance for the Madrigal family, we see the immensity of their weight in how anxious the prospect of one being bestowed on him makes Mirabel’s youngest cousin Antonio (Ravi-Cabot Conyers). The starkest example of this is Uncle Bruno (John Leguizamo), who could see into the future -which both gave him tremendous anxiety to the point of madness and made him an omen of the family, driven away years ago to become afterwards a taboo subject for the Madrigals. In a way, the gift-less Mirabel is the one family member relieved of such ghastly weight, but it also tends to make her a convenient scapegoat or source of suspicion for the domineering Abuela Alma (María Cecilia Botero) -who herself is a more subversive portrait of the grandmotherly figure.
This is the fifth Disney movie in a row to eschew a traditional villain, instead concentrating its’ conflict on a more interior and abstract source -Raya did something similar. For this one, I don’t know that it earned the beat its’ going for ultimately, and doesn’t do enough to justify the extent of the physical manifestation of the emotional fracturing its’ projected from. But the journey to it is strong enough, the mystery decently interesting as Mirabel finds more clues and the plot misdirects -it certainly comes across a touch unfocused for this. Yet the emotional climax, which seems a bit subdued for a Disney movie, succeeds at the necessary pang its’ going for -maybe the first time a Disney movie has authentically and meaningfully reckoned with family dysfunction.
Alongside this storytelling, the animators are working to their usual standard. Again, it’s aesthetics are nothing new (and in fact where I admire Pixar all the more for consistently shifting styles), but there are some notable high points in the animations’ expressiveness and visual humour. And there’s one piece in the movie, a jade glass rendering of a precognitive vision that makes for some spooky imagery -though promises more on that potential plot thread than the movie can deliver.
However the area where Encanto probably comes up the shortest comparatively is on the songs by who else: Lin-Manuel Miranda -probably the guaranteed songwriter on every Latin-American themed musical movie going forward. It’s a rare case for both a Disney movie and a Miranda joint, that none of the songs really grab you -they don’t have such instantly memorable hooks as was present in Moana or In the Heights or even Frozen II. They all sound fine (and In the Heights’ Olga Merediz provides the singing voice for Abuela Alma!), but at this point too, Miranda’s style is starting to get a bit weary -not helped by a fair bit of overexposure this year. Though I still enjoy his work, his limitations are more noticeable. And I don’t really know the purpose of having a song in a kids’ movie with such fast, indecipherable lyrics as “The Family Madrigal”. That being said, the song sequences are a lot of fun, as the animators test the limits and go freely over-the-top with what they can do. “Surface Pressure” is especially wild!
Encanto is a very buoyant, charming movie that certainly doesn’t have the hint of an animation classic to it but is more than satisfactory enough to both stand on its’ own and as part of that formidable Disney library. While it stays within formula it also continues to subtly expand Disney Animation’s ideas and scope, which is never a bad thing. In this department at least, the Encanto is not fading any time soon.
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