Erik Bates: “It ruled.”
I'm beginning to think that I'm just a Lin-Manuel Miranda fanboy. Between this, In the Heights, and Tick, Tick...BOOM, he's been on one hell of a roll this year, and I've loved every minute of it.
Encanto is a charming tale with, as expected, some great music, and a bit of a tear-jerker ending.
− December 27, 2021 • more by Erik • log in or create an account to reply
Scott Hardie: This looks fun enough that I might give it a try. I like the cast and as you said, Miranda's music enhances any movie it's in. Thanks for recommending this. − December 27, 2021 • more by Scott
Matthew Preston: A Disney/Pixar movie that has a tear-jerker ending? That doesn't sound right at all...
Seriously though, I'm looking forward to watching this with the kiddos soon. − December 28, 2021 • more by Matthew
Matthew Preston: Well, I "watched" this with my kids last night, but I didn't pay close enough attention to it to give it a fair review (cooking dinner/cleaning/etc. at the same time). I enjoyed what I did see though. − December 30, 2021 • more by Matthew
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Scott Hardie: “It was ok.”
On the surface, this is a real crowd-pleaser, one of Disney Animation's best films of the last decade. The vibrant color palette, distinctive and playful personalities, toe-tapping songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, playful cast, and engrossing mystery all add up to a very entertaining movie. If this film had stopped at the end of its second act, I'd have happily given it a rave review.
However, as with the recent Wish, there's a moral rot at the heart of the film, and that's ignoring the problematic Christ allegory of the prologue. (Grandpa gave his life to grant us the everlasting miracle of a voice-controlled smart house?) Encanto strikes me very much as a parable about social media and the excessively-online lifestyle that kids and teens now live. Image-driven and status-obsessed apps like Instagram and TikTok have created tremendous anxiety in young people, both from the haves who feel pressured to maintain the illusion of a perfect life, and the have-nots who don't fit in and feel intense ostracization and loneliness. To its credit, Encanto recognizes these problems, and addresses them in the form of three young sisters who come to see the problems with this status-obsessed society and want to reject it, among a smattering of older adults who have learned to navigate the system's problems. The film's middle act culminates in the destruction of the magic house (the movie's symbolic representation of social media), which equalizes the sisters and liberates them from their problems, although one of them struggles emotionally with how to redefine herself. The house's destruction promises that the Madrigal family shall have to venture out into the "real world" beyond the "safe" valley of their social-media bubble in order to get real jobs and live real lives and be real people. This is a triumphant ending! Imagine that -- a movie for young people that argues that eliminating Instagram and TikTok is the way toward happiness and freedom!
But modern Disney isn't interested in that kind of story. In its classic years under Walt Disney's guidance, the studio produced messages that are very much the opposite of what the studio says today: Be careful what you wish for ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in Fantasia), be careful what risks you take in pursuing what you want (Pinocchio), don't hold on to childhood wishes for too long (Peter Pan), being born special can make you a target (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), you do not deserve to be defined by a lack of normalcy (Dumbo), and more. Like Wish, Encanto is ruined by the obsession with total gratification; how dare today's massive entertainment companies not promise us that we can have anything we want and be as special as we want? And so, to my disappointment, Encanto pulls a screeching U-turn in its final act and undoes what it accomplished, rebuilding the magic-house prison that traps its heroes in arrested development and a status-based social hierarchy, except now it pretends that the problems with this system are fixed just because one sister can take rest breaks, another sister no longer has to marry a dullard, and the third sister finally feels seen and validated. Way to miss the forest for the trees, Disney. The Madrigal family had written their own happily-ever-after ending by freeing themselves and no longer needing their magic house to survive in the world; but Disney overhauls the story so that they instead achieve a happily-ever-after ending by rebuilding the magic house; they're in fact happy because they have the house. What a disturbing suggestion, arguing not just that a few community-rule tweaks to Instagram and TikTok will fix them, but that Instagram and TikTok are in fact the cause of young people's happiness. Ick.This review contains spoilers. Reveal it.
− March 5, 2025 • more by Scott • log in or create an account to reply
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