Disney’s 60th animated motion picture, Encanto, dropped today on Disney+ after being out in theaters for about 30 days. I watched it and it was fantastic. Perhaps my favorite Disney film since Tangled.
So let’s talk about it.
I’m glad the film didn’t end with Mirabel getting a gift. I’m glad Bruno was brought back into the family. I’m glad the film didn’t really have an antagonist, unless you count Abuelita, who was really just trying to do her best.
The film has spectacular visuals, and great music by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But it was almost as bad. In the end scenes I thought the message was going to be that they no longer needed the crutch of a special magic house and special magic powers any more, that each other and their neighbors was all they needed. Then, bam!, all the magic is back. So I don’t think that the movie stuck the landing.
Also, I had a real problem understanding the rapid-paced lyrics of the info-dump songs, and had to use subtitles (and sometimes rewind and pause to even read those.)
Fair point. The magic coming back was a little out of left field.
But would it have been better if the real magic was the friends we made along the way ?
Yes. How long is the one family and only one family on the face of the Earth that for unknown reasons was given magic powers going to be a dynasty? Are they going to keep expanding, and expand their influence beyond a small village of awe-struck followers? The family has a magic house, but where does their income come from? What pays for their food and their fancy clothes? Do they have a means of taking care of themselves without magic and hangers-on? Are they not made soft and infantalized while being waited on and protected by their magic house with its Tardis-like interior? At what point do the poor pesants in their enclave begin to resent their life of luxary? There are so many questions and issues, if you think about it.
Resistance is futile. All will be Madrigal.
I saw it in the theater, and plan to watch it again this evening. But at the end, I thought it showed the magic expanding out to cover the whole village. Maybe still not a great ending, but better than just restoring the Madrigals to power.
That was already the case. At the beginning of the movie the flashback shows the candle creating a range of mountains to protect the family—the village exists inside of a sheltered magical enclave. (If magic hadn’t been restored, would the mountains have crumbled?)
I took it to mean more people would be getting “gifts.”
I wasn’t thrilled by the conclusion either, but I think the lesson they were supposed to learn was that to not take their powers for granted, and every so often they will need a renewal for the next generation to understand the true meaning of what they have, or they risk losing everything altogether.
I empathized with Luisa the most, as someone who’s often had to be the strong one in my family. It’s hard sometimes, you know? I certainly don’t have her physical gifts, but I feel the need to hold things in sometimes. Like how I was the strong one while my mother was bawling when we lost our apartment and had to give up our cats so they’d have a chance at a better life.
I read this review after having seen the movie and having made my earlier posts in this thread:
Making things worse, that confrontation doesn’t actually go anywhere: the characters involved learned the lessons they had ought to, and then the film reaches its natural, graceful endpoint where everyone has changed for the better because of what has happened, and then the film gets very excited and says, “but hey, what if we pressed a giant reset button and made it so that literally nothing has been learned , except for the dubious lesson that you’re special even if you don’t have special powers, but you’re definitely more special if you do”?
I think what Disney did here, which makes it different from its other animated films, is that they created a musical mystery. The mystery Mirabel has to solve is why the magic is going out. She needs information. So she doesn’t actually go anywhere.
I thought it was fun and had some lovely moments, but, as others have suggested, didn’t really go anywhere or have much of a cohesive message.
I thought maybe the most interesting idea was the idea of the gifts being exaggerated versions of the roles that people get assigned in a family, however deliberately… the strong one, the perfect one, etc. But while it certainly touched on that, it didn’t really say anything about it.
Still, a perfectly fun watch.
But did she solve that? Was it “because Grandma doesn’t like me”?
Grandma doesn’t see the members of the family as people. She only sees the “gifts” and what they can do for the family and the village. Mirabel = no gift = nothing. Louisa = strength, or nothing. Etc.
As I see it, she solved it. Not “Grandma doesn’t like me” but “Grandma is spending so much time caring for the magic that she feels is essential for the family that she is losing sight of caring for the actual family.” Sort of like a workaholic parent, neglecting his or her children to make money for the care of said children. The magic returned when Abuela (prompted my Mirabel) concentrated her care on the people rather than on the magic.
Random thought I had. Inside the house, Mirabel effectively has magic powers too. She can use the magic of the house on command.
Also, a theory I read on Reddit. Mirabel has the same powers that Abuela has and might be the successor Abuela. Hers is the power to create conditions that creates the magic in the first place. And that is why she is the one to bring the magic back at the end.