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Encanto enchants Disney fans
FRI. | 02-11-22 | ENTERTAINMENT
Encanto is the newest Disney musical taking the world by storm. Not only that, but it is yet another Lin-Manuel Miranda movie to become a hit for its captivating soundtrack. It has quickly become one of the most popular things to watch on Disney+ and is a possible candidate for the Best Animated Feature at the 2022 Golden Globes.
Encanto highlights a Colombian family, the Madrigals, where all members have a special power except for one, Mirabel. Throughout the movie she fights to restore the family's powers as they are slowly diminishing.
Going into this movie, I thought Disney was starting to run out of ideas. I wasn’t all that excited over the plot when I initially read the synopsis, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Although I did feel as if it had a lot of the same tropes as most Disney movies, it made up for this with its large assortment of characters. All of the family members were unique from one another and made each scene interesting.
One of my favorite parts of this movie is how each family member has their own power and that power represents their character as a whole. Mirabel’s mother, Julieta, has the power to heal people with her cooking. Julieta is a compassionate and loving person and her abilities represent this. Similarly, Mirabel’s sister, Luisa, has super strength. This power matches her character well, as she is the older sister and she feels as if she has the responsibility of holding all the family problems, as she expresses in her solo number “Surface Pressure.”
Even though the characters were great in this movie,
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
the part that really drew me in was the soundtrack. The opening number, “The Family Madrigal,” sung by Mirabel, gives you an overview of each family member with some upbeat music to accompany. The lyrical writing in this song is some of my favorite in the movie. For example, Mirabel sings happily about all the members of her family to the townspeople. However, when they start asking her about her powers, she gets uncomfortable and changes the subject back to her family. As the speed of the song increases, so do Mirabel’s lyrics, showing her uncomfortable feelings about being questioned about her powers. This shows us at the beginning of the movie how much Mirabel cares for her family, but how she is disappointed that she didn’t get powers like the rest of them.
That’s just one of the many songs that I love from this movie. Songs like the previously mentioned “Surface Pressure” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” have become very popular on social media sites like TikTok. While these two are great (especially “We Don’t Talk Bruno”), there are a lot of songs that have flown under the radar in this movie. “Dos Oruguitas”, is a beautiful song sung by Abuelo, Abuela’s husband who is the reason they all have these powers. He sings this to his wife and three children about how he won’t be there forever, and they will be able to grow without him.
Overall, I thought this was a good movie. I would recommend this movie to any Disney or musical fan. If someone isn't a fan of the Disney formula for movies this may not be the movie for them, but I think it has the chance to surprise. It’s not a difficult claim to make that Disney and Lin-Manuel Miranda created a movie that will stand the test of time.
