Walt Disney’s 60th animation boasts songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda and a fine voice cast, but it’s hampered by contradictory messages and a lack of sparkle
This musical, boasting a lively voice cast and original songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has been promoted as the 60th “canonical” film from Walt
Disney Animation Studios. But however well-meaning, this milestone movie could almost represent a creative crisis for Disney – it feels like yet another step down the cul-de-sac of bland, algorithmically generated entertainment: more Stepford content from the dream factory. There are some nice moments and sweet show tunes, but Encanto feels like it is aspiring to exactly that sort of bland frictionless perfection that the film itself is solemnly preaching against, with a contrived storyline that wants to have its metaphorical cake and eat it.
Our heroine is Mirabel Madrigal: a smart, introspective, bespectacled teen living with her extended family in a magic house with a mind of its own in an idyllic village in a magically created valley somewhere in Colombia (“encanto” means enchantment or spell). She is voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, who recently had a small role in Miranda’s musical In the Heights but is probably still best known for playing the supercool tough cop Diaz in the TV
comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine.