I've been told that Encanto triggers a lot of people who have grew up with strict parents and high pressure environments. Disney uses a fantastic cartoon world to tell a story about family members straining against social expectations and filial obligation. As a result, Encanto is probably more emotionally taxing to adults than most other Disney movies, something that will fly over the heads of younger children who have yet to be crushed by parental disappointment.
Encanto is about the Madrigal family, blessed through magical happenstance with many wonderous gifts. For starters, their home, "Casita" is a living creature whose walls and floors shift about at the family's convenience. Also, each new Madrigal child is granted a unique superpower (shape shifting, super hearing etc), which makes them exceptionally useful to the family and surrounding town. Everyone got a power except our protagonist, Mirabel, which makes her seemingly useless and puts her at odds with the family.
In some ways, Encanto feels like Moana, in that the story follows one girl's quest to stop her paradisiacal home from falling into ruin. Unlike Moana however, the quest is an emotional, rather than a physical one. Almost the entire film takes place inside or directly next to Casita, and the trials and tribulations involve her overcoming difficult familial relationships. The character's emotional journey is the whole journey. It is a novel idea from Disney, who was getting into a rut, obligating its characters to go on long treks to pick up glowing magical plot devices. Part of me wonders whether the single location is at all owed to Lin-Manuel Miranda, with his stage show background, writing the music. The single setting certainly would make this easier to adapt into a stage musical.
One side effect of Encanto involving no traversal is that the movie feels way shorter than others. The middle act is tiny. It still has just as many songs though, and sometimes we're launching into our next musical number only minutes after the last one finished, so it starts to feel a bit like padding. Furthermore, given that a lot of the difficulties in the movies are overcome simply by characters having an open and honest conversation about their feelings, it doesn't exactly have the highest of stakes. Encanto is ultimately a humble and colourful story that doesn't quite reach Pixar levels of dishing out emotional blunt trauma to audiences, but it will have plenty of adults sobbing. Any movie that gets its audiences to cry - for the right reasons - is doing well.
Emotional Daaamage!
I've been told that Encanto triggers a lot of people who have grew up with strict parents and high pressure environments. Disney uses a fantastic cartoon world to tell a story about family members straining against social expectations and filial obligation. As a result, Encanto is probably more emotionally taxing to adults than most other Disney movies, something that will fly over the heads of younger children who have yet to be crushed by parental disappointment.
Encanto is about the Madrigal family, blessed through magical happenstance with many wonderous gifts. For starters, their home, "Casita" is a living creature whose walls and floors shift about at the family's convenience. Also, each new Madrigal child is granted a unique superpower (shape shifting, super hearing etc), which makes them exceptionally useful to the family and surrounding town. Everyone got a power except our protagonist, Mirabel, which makes her seemingly useless and puts her at odds with the family.
In some ways, Encanto feels like Moana, in that the story follows one girl's quest to stop her paradisiacal home from falling into ruin. Unlike Moana however, the quest is an emotional, rather than a physical one. Almost the entire film takes place inside or directly next to Casita, and the trials and tribulations involve her overcoming difficult familial relationships. The character's emotional journey is the whole journey. It is a novel idea from Disney, who was getting into a rut, obligating its characters to go on long treks to pick up glowing magical plot devices. Part of me wonders whether the single location is at all owed to Lin-Manuel Miranda, with his stage show background, writing the music. The single setting certainly would make this easier to adapt into a stage musical.
One side effect of Encanto involving no traversal is that the movie feels way shorter than others. The middle act is tiny. It still has just as many songs though, and sometimes we're launching into our next musical number only minutes after the last one finished, so it starts to feel a bit like padding. Furthermore, given that a lot of the difficulties in the movies are overcome simply by characters having an open and honest conversation about their feelings, it doesn't exactly have the highest of stakes. Encanto is ultimately a humble and colourful story that doesn't quite reach Pixar levels of dishing out emotional blunt trauma to audiences, but it will have plenty of adults sobbing. Any movie that gets its audiences to cry - for the right reasons - is doing well.