Movie Thoughts: Encanto (2021)

• Released: 24 November 2021
• Directed by: Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Charise Castro Smith
• Running time: 1 h 42 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

In a family where each member is given a magical gift, the youngest granddaughter lacking one will either make or break the future of the household.

My Thoughts

I really expected to have a lot to say on Encanto, but honeslty, I just don't. It's a good movie. Not 100% my cup of tea, but it's very solid!

First the amazing stuff out of the way: the visuals. I love the character designs (so much variation on the faces, even in the women this time), the animation is fantastic, the song sequences creative, the execution of the magical house is great, and the environments look incredibly lively. 

For my personal opinion on why the rating isn't higher, it's simply because this movie has the type of story I just really gravitate towards. I'm not a big musical fan, I'm not a big fan of small-scale stories, so I guess that's just why this didn't speak to me personally as much. But there's also a lot of other stuff to like here.

The characters, for example, are all very varied and unique, each with a unique gift (except Mirabel) and personality. I guess my wish with this that there are maybe too many family members to get to know them all well in the span of the film's runtime. I don't want any of them to be cut because they're all fun, but if this were (for example) a series, we could explore each character much more, because currently there's very few outside of Mirabel that get enough screen-time to leave a proper impression. They're absolutely fun characters, but there's just too many for such a short runtime.

The songs vary and while I don't remember all of them, I overall liked them, with the Bruno one being an obvious favorite. 

So yeah I didn't have that much to say here, but I definitely enjoyed it! Another strong installment in the Disney library.