Encanto (2021)
Review of Encanto (2021), directed by Bryan Howard and Jared Bush
The first time I heard that Disney was releasing Encanto was when I first got my AMC A List (which I now cancelled by the point this has come out, I cancelled it in January 2022 when Omicron started getting bad) and I was seeing movies on a consistent basis again.
Literally every single movie I was going to see in October and November of 2021 were showing the trailer for Encanto, and, to be honest, I wasn’t very interested in it. The selling point for me would’ve been the fact that Lin-Manuel Miranda did the music, but still I wasn’t very intrigued by the premise.
Flash forward to February 2022. My sister has seen Encanto after leeching off her friend’s Disney+, then begs me to watch it. Lin-Manuel is yet again the selling point because I had just seen the In the Heights movie and loved it, so I agreed on a chilly Saturday night to sit on my couch and actually watch this movie.
And perhaps my sister overhyped it too much, because I was not a big fan of it at all. Onwards!
The only powerless family member in a magical family has to find out the secret as to why their powers are disappearing.
Encanto is set with a Colombian family with magical powers; this family is pretty diverse, which is good to see when considering the mix of Latin cultures. Representation matters! Anyways, the family’s Abuela escaped with her husband and three children from a brutal armed conflict many years ago, but her husband sacrificed himself so the family could live.
The candle she has brought with her shows itself as to having magical powers, and with it came Casita (their magical home that functions like a living organism) and mysterious powers that each of the kids are bestowed. Bruno has the ability to see the future.
Pepa can control the weather based on her current mood. Then, finally, our main character’s mother can heal people through food.
The next generation also has powers: Isabela is absolutely perfect and can grow flowers, Luisa is strong, Dolores can hear everything, and Camilo can shapeshift into whatever he wants to be. Ravi, who comes of age for his powers during the movie, can talk to animals. And then there’s our protagonist Mirabel.
She is the only one in the family to lack powers, which causes Abuela to treat her differently and as an outcast. This, in turn, harms Mirabel’s self-esteem as everyone around her sees her as a burden of sorts.
We get some songs and many scenes about this insecurity, so it seems only natural though that she has to figure this out. The others are used to a cushy life with powers, so when they’re going, their entire purpose as humans seems invalidated.
It’s like being raised as royalty and as soon as you’re a teenager you lose all of it. We see this best with the character of Luisa, who loses her powers the most first. She begins to crack and in “Surface Pressure” she sings about how she carries the weight of the world literally on her shoulders.
There are so many expectations that Maribel was freed of because she had no powers, such as Isabel wanting to get married for the sake of her family. She doesn’t want to be perfect but keeps that pretense up.
Familial bonds are the key to this movie. As their powers start to dwindle and the family begins to fight within itself, their powers start to disappear. Bruno, who left home ten years before the movie started, was an outcast like Mirabel because people couldn’t handle what his visions saw.
But even at the end of the day, he never left because he just lives in the walls—you can figure that part out in the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
Everyone talks about him in the past tense, but Dolores says she can still hear him in the walls, giving a blatant but hidden clue that he’s still around. That part is interesting though because Dolores is aware he’s there, but doesn’t say anything—perhaps it’s to protect the family because everyone resents him.
She’s shown to be incapable of keeping secrets when she finds out about Maribel putting together Bruno’s very last prophecy, so her motives are questionable here.
At the end of the day, I didn’t like this movie because it never goes outside of the home. Which is kind of the point because it’s about a family coming together and unifying once more, but it kind of clickbaits you into thinking that Maribel is going to go through some journey when she doesn’t.
I found that to be too unsatisfying, and I didn’t enjoy the music. It got catchy after I listened to it a couple times, but it wasn’t my cup of tea at the end of the day.
Overall Thoughts
Lots of people love this film. Reviewing is so subjective and based on personal preference at the end of the day, but I felt this story lacked substance outside of the classic family story. I wanted more from it besides feeling like an outsider, expectations, and wanting perfection.
It’s a story I felt like we’ve seen many times before, except this time it’s with representation. The representation part is awesome, but I think I would’ve preferred to see a Colombian folk tale or something brought to life.
