Oh my gosh. This movie. I saw it twice and I still cried each damn time. I watched it a couple of weeks ago (6/6/22: as of today, it was a couple of months ago when I saw this film) and my gosh, when I say I bawled through the entire movie, I literally did just that. The colors. The music. The storyline. Just, like, oh my gosh. I honestly think I cried, too, because I hadn't seen a Pixar movie in a while and forgot how much I love them. Coco and Onward were the last ones I had seen lately.
So just to give you a synopsis of the film if you haven't seen it yet. It's about this girl named Mirabel who is part of a renowned family called The Madrigals. They are known throughout Colombia for their incredible gifts. Her mom, for instance, makes delicious food that can cure just about anyone's ailments; Luisa is the strong one and can literally lift anything, whether it's a house or a bunch of donkeys; Isabela is Mirabel's sister and is the perfect sister who doesn't want anything to do with Mirabel; Pepa can make weather; Delores has super-sonic hearing and all the other family members have some sort of magical gift. And the matriarch holding down the fort is Abuela, who keeps everything together and makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks and damages the long-held reputation of the Madrigals. In the first musical number Mirabel is telling all the neighborhood kids about her family members' gifts, but then after she is done they ask her over and over again what her gift is and she keeps dodging their question, instead preferring to talk more about her family's gifts. Finally, Abuela catches her dancing and singing and asks her if there is anything wrong, and Mirabel hesitates, but then one of the kids blurts out that they were asking Mirabel about her Gift. Abuela then tells Mirabel and the kids that Mirabel didn't get a Gift. A delivery guy then comes and has Mirabel carry a huge basket of goods for Antonio's gift ceremony (Antonio is Pepa and Felix's son) and mentions in passing Mirabel's giftlessness. Crushed but trying to keep an appearance of I'm-doing-ok, Mirabel tries to help with the preparations for the ceremony but ends up damaging some of the decorations, prompting her grandmother to tell her to not help because everything must go perfectly during Antonio's gift ceremony. Before the ceremony, Mirabel finds Antonio hiding under her bed and gives him a present to celebrate his ceremony (this scene really made me tear up because it was so heartfelt) and she tells him the ceremony is going to go perfectly. He doubts this and asks her what if his gift doesn't work, and she helps him cheer up. When the ceremony finally arrives, Antonio is walked down an aisle in front of lots of people, but he finds Mirabel standing on the side and motions to her to come and escort him to his door, where he will be tested to see if his gift works. As Mirabel walks, she remembers when she herself was at her own gift ceremony as a little girl and nervously walking towards the door. Antonio ends up succeeding and opens the door to find his gift is that he can communicate with animals, and he finds this incredible jungle of animals when he opens the door. Everyone is celebrating, but then Mirabel stands on the side and remembers that when she tried to open the door for her gift ceremony, it disintegrated, meaning that she wasn't given a special gift by the family Madrigal. She wonders if there is ever a hopeful future for her since she doesn't have super crazy cool gifts like everyone else in her family does.
However, she does find something that the other members of the family don't seem to perceive. She finds cracks in the foundation of the family home, but when she brings it up to people at Antonio's ceremony no one recognizes the cracks and once again Abuela looks embarrassed that Mirabel even brought it up, leaving her feeling even more dejected. There is a member of the family that the Madrigals don't talk about, and that person is Bruno, who they portray as this creepy guy who caused everyone's misfortunes. Mirabel sets out to find Bruno but ends up bringing some glass back from Bruno's lair and piecing it together, which is a big no-no because the family isn't supposed to bring up Bruno. Unfortunately this happens at Isabela's engagement dinner, when Dolores, who hears everything, finds out Mirabel visited Bruno's lair and then tells everyone at the dinner table. The dinner is ruined and no one trusts Mirabel anymore. Before that, there was a brilliant number by Luisa, who is supposed to be the strong one in the family who lifts houses, donkeys, basically anything heavy. Mirabel tries to get some information from her, and Luisa tells her she feels pressured to lift everyone's burdens. She then tells Mirabel that she secretly felt weak when Mirabel revealed there were cracks in the foundation at Antonio's ceremony, and says that she often feels she carries too many people's burdens.
Honestly, I really felt I could relate to Mirabel. She feels like she doesn't possess a gift and often struggles with self-confidence just because there's so much pressure on the Madrigal family to put on appearances of having these supernatural gifts, this supernatural strength, and trying to keep it all together. But later on, we find out that no one in the family is perfect and everyone actually just wants to live in a way that is true to themselves. Even Abuela realizes that neither she nor the family are perfect, but to get to this realization she had to go back and face her painful past where her husband was killed by an army of bandits and she had to fend for herself to protect her three children. Carrying this grief and trauma inside of her while keeping an appearance of togetherness was probably one of the more painful moments of the film, because Abuela really was trying her best to keep the family together and happy, but she realized that by alienating her daughter and Bruno for being different, she also kind of suffered because she couldn't truly be happy knowing that her granddaughter felt like an outcast and like no one cared about her just because she didn't possess the gifts they did.
This movie also reminded me of this TV show I used to watch called The Good Place because there's a character in the show named Tahani and she has a sister named Kamilah. When they were growing up, Tahani's parents favored Kamilah over Tahani because she got good grades in school and was an all-around perfect child, while Tahani didn't live up to their expectations. One particularly painful moment Tahani recalls is when their parents had her and Kamilah compete to see who could paint the best picture, and Kamilah's painting impressed the parents while Tahani's did not. Tahani finds Kamilah put on a successful art exhibition in Hungary and is impressing all these people with her talents in art and cooking, and it angers Tahani because she's always been compared to Kamilah for most of her life and she doesn't want it to continue. However, Tahani realizes that she really just wants to have a loving relationship with her sister, one that is free from cut-throatness and perfectionism, one where they can just love each other for who they are, and Tahani ends up giving Kamilah a hug and telling her that their parents want her and Kamilah to keep competing with each other and it's getting in the way of their sisterly bond. I thought about this moment in The Good Place because in Encanto, Mirabel's sister Isabela is the perfect sister and she is just keeping up appearances of being perfect because that is what Abuela and the community expect from her. Each time Mirabel tries to talk with her or be near her, Isabela sees this as a threat to her image of perfection and gets angry and tells Isabela to stay out of her life. However, there's a crucial moment when Bruno is helping Mirabel see into the future what she needs to do to save her family's foundation from crumbling, and in the future she sees her hugging Isabela. At first, she is repulsed that she would even do such a thing because Isabela has been nothing but mean and condescending to Mirabel, but when she visits Isabela in her room, Isabela confesses to her that she just wants to be free to create what she wants. Her room is expected to look a certain way, but she ends up using her gift to express herself however she wants even if it's not the perfect image people see of her. She ends up producing all these colorful powders and gets them all over her room and all over her and Mirabel and when Abuela sees this she is distraught that Isabela would ruin her image of cleanliness, but Isabela at this point doesn't care because she's now happy that she doesn't have to live up to other people's expectations of her.
This is totally random, but do you remember when they had the Oscars pre-show this year? The cast of Encanto was on the red carpet and they were talking about how they were going to perform the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno." For some strange reason, I thought they were talking about the 2009 mockumentary called Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen because I haven't met someone named Bruno in a long time and that film was one of the few times I have encountered someone named Bruno (Disclaimer: I haven't seen the film Bruno so I of course can't talk about it, no pun intended.)
Overall, Encanto was an excellent movie and I recommend it if you haven't seen it. Also, Stephanie Beatriz, who played one of my favorite TV characters Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn 99, plays Mirabel so I was really happy when I read she was played by her! 
Encanto. 2021. Rated PG for some thematic elements and mild peril.
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