Encanto: Far from enchanted

Encanto (2021) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

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.

 

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 so-called story — credited to co-directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard, along with four other meddling hands — makes absolutely no sense, as it maladroitly lurches from one bizarrely random sequence to the next. Even fantasy must follow its own set of rules, else the narrative slides into a make-it-up-as-they-go muddle that cannot possibly get viewers involved.

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.

 

Julieta (Angie Cepeda), always happiest in the kitchen, achieves the power to heal all wounds with the food she prepares. Pepa (Carolina Gaitán), prone to severe mood shifts, is perhaps an ill-advised choice for controlling the weather with her emotions.

 

Bruno (John Leguizamo), in turn … oh, but nobody talks about Bruno, per Abuela Alma’s strict guidelines. Lest there be any doubt, another tiresome song insists as much.

 

Time passes; Abuela Alma’s children grow into adulthood. Julieta marries and has three daughters of her own: Isabela (Diane Guerrero), Luisa (Jessica Darrow) and Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz). The ever-expanding Madrigal family members benevolently use their magical gifts to help the “regular folks” in Encanto’s growing community.

 

On her fifth birthday, Isabela’s magical door grants her the power to make plants grow and flowers bloom (which perhaps contributes to her narcissistic behavior). Luisa, hardworking and determined, is given the power of super-strength: sufficient to pick up entire buildings.

 

Mirabel gets … nothing. Even worse, during a ceremony attended by the entire village, her golden door vanishes when she touches the knob.

 

(Pepa also marries and has three children — Dolores, Camilo and Antonio — but I can hear your eyes rolling in their sockets, so we’ll let them slide.)

 

All of this detail gradually unfolds via flashback; the film actually begins with 15-year-old Mirabel struggling to find her place in the tempestuous Madrigal family. The house is otherwise quite kind to her, “communicating” via clacking floor tiles and flapping window shutters (admittedly, a clever and quite amusing running gag).

 

It gradually becomes clear that Mirabel is regarded as a “pest” who “tries too hard” — particularly by Abuela Alma, who has become a stern grandmother — but there’s no evidence of this (yet another script disconnect); she seems a thoughtful, kind-hearted girl.

 

All heck breaks loose one evening, during yet another door-unveiling ceremony, when Mirabel — elsewhere in the enormous house — has a nightmarish vision of the walls cracking and crumbling, the magical candle flickering and dying out. But nobody else has seen any of this, and nobody believes her, assuming it’s yet another of Miranda’s ploys to draw attention to herself. 

 

Say what?

 

(Hey, if I lived in a home surrounded by magic, and a wide-eyed and clearly terrified teenager claimed to have seen a scary vision, I’d believe her.)

 

Moving forward, the narrative becomes increasingly cruel and mean-spirited, putting poor Mirabel through all manner of adversity. She decides that the vision must have something to do with the long-vanished Bruno, so she ventures into the realm beyond his magic door, which has remained closed for years.

 

At which point, as if events weren’t already chaotic enough, things turn really weird. And random. And (sigh) incredibly stupid. Any semblance of continuity vanishes. (For starters, I’d very much like to know how Miranda makes it back across a yawning chasm.) This is flop-sweat, spaghetti-against-the-wall spit-balling from the School of Desperation Writing.

 

Sigh.

 

Another random, out-of-left-field development concerns Isabela suddenly finding her true self, during a rock-hued song — “What Else Can I Do?” — that sounds so much like “Let It Go,” from Frozen, that one imagines Miranda was ordered to imitate that earlier hit as closely as possible.

 

I suppose little girls will identify with Mirabel, who — despite all odds — remains plucky, forthright and heroic. Beatriz voices her with appropriate passion; the numb-nuts script certainly isn’t her fault. And, granted, the character animation and background color palette are terrific: typically Disney-gorgeous.

 

Finally, yes: It’s nice to see a cast composed entirely of people of color.

 

Too bad they didn’t rate a better story.

 

Encanto appears to be traveling with a short about a parent and child raccoon, “Far from the Tree,” which — at 7 crisp minutes — is infinitely superior to the film it precedes.

Consider yourself warned.