I finaly watched Disney's Encanto, and I have... thoughts

Cards on the table time: I am not particularly a fan of movie musicals, just in general, and I'm not particularly a fan of the Disney animated take on them. 

There are exceptions, of course. Beauty and The Beast was fantastic, as was the late Robin Williams' performance in Aladdin; I enjoyed Idina Menzel's soaring solo in Frozen, and its subversion of the "true love's kiss" plot point; I enjoyed Moana, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and all; I even enjoyed Brave's plucky protagonist.

But I didn't love The Lion King; to me, it already felt formulaic, with obligatory comedians, expository musical numbers, and a plot that was supposed to be all about the reality of life on the African savanna, but built on outdated animal facts right out of a Wild Kingdom episode from decades ago. It didn't help that its catchiest musical number basically told kids that a life lived with no regard for responsibilities or consequences was the best life.

(By the way, young lions almost never grow up to lead the pride they were born into; they usurp the leadership of other prides, kill all the young lions of that pride to drive the lionesses into heat, and then mate with as many of them as possible to ensure that all of the pride's offspring from that point forward are their genetic descendants. And spotted hyenas are far more gregarious, and industrious, than The Lion King (or Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom) have told you.)

I didn't like Mulan, whose use of Eddie Murphy was such an obvious attempt to recapture the Robin Williams magic from Aladdin that it just came off as desperate. I didn't like Hercules, which was just a mess. And I didn't like Pocahontas or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, although nobody else seems to have cared for those films, either, so that's not saying much.

For years, it's been up to Pixar to keep the House of Mouse in the animation game. That was fine by me; Toy Story, The Incredibles, and Up were all fantastic. But none of them were musicals; exceptions like Frozen and Moana aside, Disney seemed more interested in creating live-action (or, in the Lion King's case, photorealistic CGI) versions of their animated classics, than in crafting new ones.

After watching Encanto, I can't help but feel like that might be a better path forward for them. Because in spite of its glowing reviews, Encanto misses the mark so completely that I can only assume that other critics are grading Lin Manuel Miranda on his own, very generous, curve.

"When your emotions become too strong for speech, you sing; when they become too strong for song, you dance."

Songs can be used for comedic effect, of course, if emotions are running too intense for audience to sustain them; and, of course, good music helps ticket sales, since these are musicals we're talking about. But the best use of music in musicals is to highlight moments of high emotion, or of high conflict; or to establish or reinforce characters, or themes. The songs in a well-written musical are always advancing the story; musicals in which the songs serve to stop the story, or which actively distract from the story, tend to be less than good.

This is why classic Disney musicals typically open with an overture, which introduces us to some of the movie's musical themes and leitmotifs, and then moves on to our first view of the protagonist, in the form of their "I want" song.

Belle wants more than this provincial life. Moana is called to the sea, dreaming of how far she'll go. Anna wants her sister's affection, now that they're the only family each of them have left. And so on. 

These songs do a lot of work in a Disney musical. First, they introduce us to the story's protagonist, and tells us what they want; and it also tells what they believe is missing from their lives. It tells us the lie the character believes, which they'll need to move past in order to grow, and eventually overcome the story's antagonistic force(s). It sets the stage for everything that comes after, and involves us in the narrative emotionally, and immediately.

Encanto spends its first big musical number introducing us, in bullet-point form, to the Family Madrigal. It's lovely, and lively, and well-written and well-performed, and it's pure exposition. And all of the information conveyed by this song is repeated later, so it's not even necessary. Oof.

Most of the movie is like this. Moments of strong emotion are played as comedic; there's a heart-breaking moment when we meet Bruno, and discover that he's been living inside the walls of the family home, longing for the embrace of a family that he loves dearly but who've all rejected him, only to have Bruno suddenly turn into Woody Allen for a minute, which is not only distractingly comedic but rather tone-deaf for a family film. 

Meanwhile exposition that should be mere moments of dialogue are distracting, show-stopping song-and-dance numbers. Seriously, they tango. It's well-done, but it stops any momentum the story might have built to that point in its tracks.

Other problems

In no particular order:

1. The peril of the movie starts out vague, is never properly explained, and ends up being nothing at all, with literally no lasting consequences for anybody. Mirabel spends most of the movie warning that the magic is in danger, and wanting to save the magic, but there's really no moment in the film where the nature of that danger is properly established... until the very end of the film, that is, when it's suddenly revealed out of nowhere that the family is actually dysfunctional, and that the family's magic is endangered by their buried internal conflicts and never-expressed disagreements.
2. Not only is the looming peril rather vague until way too late, but there's no antagonist at all. Bruno is set up as a figure of some menace early on, or at least a figure of danger, but is revealed to be the sweetest character in the film by its midpoint, and then... nothing.
3. The ending undercuts the main themes of the film, i.e. that the Madrigal family is magical enough without their miraculous powers, and that the townspeople love them anyway, by... having Mirable give them all their powers back at the end of the film. Somehow. Yeah.
4. The film has too many characters, most of whom do very little except take up space and time in a film which really doesn't have the space or time to spare. Talks-to-animals kid pops up at a couple of plot-convenient moments, but is entirely absent from the movie outside of that; hears-everything-and-can't-keep-a-secret-girl ends up romantically linked to so-perfect-that-flowers-grow-in-her-footsteps-girl's unwanted fiancee, but it happens out of nowhere, and at the end of the film. And so on.
5. The film's historical context and themes of inter-generational trauma, and the plight of refugees, are breezed past so quickly and superficially that you might miss them. Only Abuela really manifests these darker themes and tone.. and, again, it's not until the end of the film that it really happens.
   

It's not all bad.

I've been pretty negative about Encanto so far, which is a little unfair; the movie isn't so much bad as mediocre. There is good stuff in Encanto.

First, there's the music. 

While most of the songs are not doing the narrative work that they should be doing, Luiza's and Isabella's songs are both really, really good: they're emotionally powerful, character-building songs of the sort that musicals are supposed to have, and they're accompanied by some really amazing and stylish visuals. Even the exposition songs are high-energy numbers, with loads of charm, excellent performances, and solid animation work. Taken in isolation, the songs are well-crafted and well-executed; I only wish that Lin Manuel Miranda's talents had been brought to bear on more of the film's moments of greater emotion and conflict.

The score is good, too. The trend in movie scoring has trended towards invisibility in recent years, and the score is mostly doing subtle work here, too, but it's all good, and serves to effectively reinforce the moments of conflict and emotion in the film which are missing their musical numbers. Again, the emphasis is backwards; the powerful emotional moments should be getting the show-stopping musical numbers, and not subtle underscoring, but it's still good work.

The non-musical performances are also good. John Leguizamo's Bruno is a stand-out, of course, but the rest of the cast isn't too far behind, and it's a big cast; there may be too many characters for narrative economy, but with performances this good I didn't mind so much. Even La Casita, the Madrigals' magical house, gets a bunch of charm and personality, much like Beauty and The Beast's animated flatware. 

Also, apparently Alan Tudyk is in there, somewhere? I think he's the toucan? Not a speaking role, but Alan Tudyk is always a win, even if he's only barely in the movie.

Second, there's the big cultural moment that Encanto is part of.

There's no way to overstate the importance of the representation that this film represents for the culture and people of Columbia, and for Latinos in general. I'll leave to others the proper expression of this, since they can speak to it more personally and more directly than I can, but it's definitely a big deal that a movie that's so directly about something other than the English-speaking culture of America or the U.K. I suspect that a lot of the "grading on the curve" that I mentioned earlier are the result of this feature of the film.

Finally, there are the visuals, which are stunning. 

The sheer amount of detail in every frame, with so much of it moving every moment of those frames, must have taken a ridiculous amount of work to pull off. Characters don't just have different hair styles; they have different hair textures, and their hair moves differently depending on its cut, curl, and thickness in exactly the sort of way that real hair moves, and which animated hair so rarely does.

The verdict:

Encanto is clearly lovingly-made; it's thoroughly-researched; it's well-crafted; and it's visually stunning. But I've said it before: we live in an age of visual marvels, where the impossible appears on the screen so regularly as to seem banal. Impressive visuals are not a selling point anymore; they're table stakes. You must have them, but they are not enough to make for a great film, in and of themselves.

Ultimately, though, there's just no way around it: by the film's mid-point, I was fast-forwarding through the musical numbers to get to the story beats, and the last few story beats left me unsatisfied and underwhelmed. It's not bad, but it's also not great, and culturally important as it is, it's not a cultural moment of the same scale or impact as Black Panther. 

If you love this movie, then I'm happy for you. If you feel represented by this movie, or really seen by this movie, then I'm happy for you. If you find that you just can't stop singing along to the soundtrack, then I'm happy for you. I truly am. But none of those things describes me, and I just can't recommend Encanto to anyone who isn't going to grade it on the same curve as the critics mostly seem to have used.

B-