Some films don’t simply turn out bad; they wind up spectacularly awful.
Disney’s new animated musical is such a mess, I scarcely know where to begin.
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| Astonished to find that her Uncle Bruno is alive and well, Mirabel is surprised — and a bit unnerved — by the "companions" with whom he shares his Spartan home. |
The ludicrously flamboyant song-and-dance sequences seem to have been snatched from some hallucinogenic alternate universe, then stitched clumsily into the warped storyline.
And — with apologies to composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has done so much better elsewhere, and should have known better here — the tunes themselves are entirely unmemorable; each one is desperate to become the next Disney power anthem (and misses by a mile). Aside from the first song — which is mildly clever, and evokes the introductory “Belle,” from Beauty and the Beast — the rest don’t even try to integrate with the story’s clumsy flow, instead bringing the film to a whiplash-inducing halt every time.
Not even half an hour into this misfire, each time Germaine Franco’s background score began to swell, Constant Companion and I exchanged horrified glances and spoke our own sotto voce chorus of “Oh, gawd; not another one…!”
The film also is laden with sight-gags, some reasonably amusing but often pointless, as if the writers hope such antics will distract us from the vapid storyline.
What. A. Waste. Of. Time. And. Talent.
Even at a comparatively brief 99 minutes, this is a butt-numbing slog.
The eye-rolling saga defies easy summation, but I’ll give it a shot.
After many of the inhabitants of a peaceful Colombian town of Indigenous people are executed by gun-toting assassins — so much more horrifying than Bambi’s mother being shot by a hunter! — new young mother Abuela Alma Madrigal (voiced by María Cecilia Botero) chances upon a magic candle (!), whose power raises tall mountains around what becomes the survivors’ new community of Encanto.
The candle also “builds” an amazing magical house for Abuela Alma and her three triplet children: Julieta, Pepa and Bruno. On their collective fifth birthday, three new golden-hued doors appear in the upstairs hallway, leading to a new enchanted bedroom that grants its occupant a magical power.
The inexhaustible candle presides over all such activities, glowing cheerfully from an upper-floor window.
