Disney's Encanto: is it worth watching?

WARNING: Includes spoilers for the movie Encanto.

Disney’s newest movie Encanto has been receiving praise from both audiences and critics. I won’t deny that the movie is visually stunning and is one of Disney’s best animation musical films. But nothing is perfect and that includes this movie.

Encanto was directed by Jared Bush, Brian Howard, and Charise Castro Smith. The movie was nominated for 43 awards and so far has won 4. The story follows the main character Mirabel Madrigal as she tries to figure out what is taking away their family’s blessing and tries to get it back. Mirabel is the only member of her family who did not receive a magical gift and that affects her relationship with the rest of her family members.

To begin the movie is rated as 6+ on Disney’s streaming platform, most of the movie would be appropriate for children that age and it does seem that the movie was written for that age range (more on that later) but the movie touches some heavy subjects for example the death of Abuela’s husband. There is one specific scene that is very sad and made me think that perhaps the age ratings should have been increased a bit. The movie is also a bit complex and in a few moments it can become a bit hard to follow the story, but most kids would enjoy the movie simply because of its colours and music.

About the music, I was not surprised by the quality of the song-writing, Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of the biggest names in musical theatre, up there with Stephen Sondheim and Jonathan Larson. His music for this movie is really good, the songs feel appropriate and have a strong Latin influence. Most of the actors did a wonderful job, but in my opinion having cast a few more actors with experience in musical theatre would have been a good call, one example of this is Jessica Darrow who plays the voice of Luisa, Maribel’s oldest sister, When it comes to the acting she sound’s great but it is clear in her song that she does not have experience in musical films in contrast with Stephanie Beatriz who plays Maribel, she is most known for her role in Brooklyn 99 as Rosa, but she has been in a movie musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda called in the heights, during the movie it is clear how even just a bit of musical experience can change an actors performance in a movie like this.

The only other problem is the pace, the movie is short it doesn’t even reach 1 hour and 50 minutes, this is likely due to the fact that kids have short attention spans and the writers intended this movie to be for young kids. But because of its short run time some of the plot points feel too rushed or too dragged out. In the begging everything feels like it is moving slow but towards the end everything is moving very fast.

This probably makes me sound like I hated the movie, I did not, I actually really enjoyed it when I say it with my family on New Year’s Eve. I would recommend this movie mostly to families and older kids, it is also a very nice movie for fans of Moana, a lot of people enjoyed moana because she was not the typical Disney princess, Maribel’s the same, additionally Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote for both movies.

Maria Matos