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This was published 1 year ago

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ENCANTO ★★, 109 minutes, rated PG

15 year-old Mirabel lives with her family in the mountains of Colombia. Credit:Disney

I'm still puzzling over the phenomenal popularity of Frozen, which I completely failed to foresee when I reviewed it eight years ago. So it's possible I'm missing the boat again in my lack of enthusiasm for Encanto, the latest lavish, forward-thinking, painfully well-intended computer-animated fantasy-musical from Disney.

While Encanto isn't officially a version of Cinderella, it's plainly a variation on the theme, although screenwriter Charise Castro Smith and her co-directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush have opted to do without the evil stepmother and the ugly sisters.

It's also a kind of superhero movie, centred on the mostly female Madrigal family, who live in a homely version of a Disney castle known as the Casita, on the edge of a secluded Colombian village where they're treated as obliging local gods.

As in Pixar's The Incredibles, each family member has a unique gift. Luisa (voiced by Jessica Darrow) is super-strong, Pepa (Carolina Gaitan) controls the weather, and so forth, while matriarch Abuela (Maria Cecilia Botero) is the keeper of the flame - a literal candle - which is the source of all this magic.

The only Madrigal left out in the cold is one of the younger daughters, klutzy, all-too-ordinary Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz). But when the flame is in danger of going out, guess who embarks on a quest to save the day.

Right away, there are too many human characters here and not enough jokes. But in most departments - even including Lin-Manuel Miranda's earnest songs - the craft is at the level expected from a no-expense-spared Disney production.

The core problem is the same one found in the recent movie version of Miranda's Broadway show In The Heights: an aversion to dramatic conflict, carried to the point where the whole story resembles one big symptom of neurosis.

We're told over and over that the Madrigal family really is wonderful, and that everybody in it means well - even if Mirabel has spent her life being treated like an also-ran, and even if her visionary uncle Bruno (John Leguizamo) was made to feel so guilty about his gift for seeing unpleasant truths he had to run away and skulk behind the Casita's enchanted walls.

There's no denying mistakes have been made, but once everything is out in the open it's hugs and forgiveness all round. This is a more insidious form of sentimentality than you'll find in, say, Bambi - and an illustration of what can go wrong when films for children strive for a supposedly more mature point of view.

Whatever Smith and her team might think they're doing, Encanto isn't a realistic story of family dysfunction but a fairytale. And a fairytale without villains is a lot less fun.
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Jake Wilson is a film critic for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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I didn't enjoy Encanto - but then I didn't like Frozen, either

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This was published 1 year ago Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size ENCANTO ★★, 109 minutes, rated PG I'm still puzzling over the phenomenal popularity of Frozen, which I completely failed to foresee when I reviewed it eight years ago.

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If you watched the trailer for this PT Barnum biopic and were startled and confused when Hugh Jackman burst into song, then prepare for greater bafflement. This energetic musical boasts plenty of razzle-dazzle and at least two proper toe-tappers from Pasek and Paul, the voguish songwriters behind La La Land's City of Stars.

Between miasma-ready showtunes, there's a flimsy, knickerless plot that exists only to jump from one autotune performance and tacky CG backdrop to another. Roughly speaking: PT Barnum (Jackman) dreams of achieving fame and fortune with a circus, then he loses sight of his dream, then he remembers it again. Here come crummy-looking digital elephants. The end.

Musical theatre veteran Jackman gives it socks, despite his underwritten central character. But he and several others seem entirely the wrong age for their roles (although, in real life, to be fair, Barnum didn't get into the circus business until he was 60). Michelle Williams, hardly synonymous with song and dance, appears to have wandered in from the kind of movie that stars, well, Michelle Williams. Her feeble solo number, "crescendoing" in a sad series of "ooh ooh oohs", wouldn't cut it on a talky French disco record. You oohs, you lose.

The normally reliable Rebecca Ferguson, playing Swedish chanteuse Jenny Lind, not only doesn't sing (Loren Allred does the heavy lifting), she can't even lip-synch convincingly. And let's never speak of Gayle Rankin's Queen Victoria again.

The film's insistence that Barnum's freakshow is born from warm, fuzzy humanity and very contemporary notions of inclusivity is not just historically inaccurate, it's at odds with The Greatest Showman's extremely pretty idea of freakery. Pink hair? Tattoos? Fabulous dancing skills? Those monsters.

For all these issues, there are some properly great things about The Greatest Showman. Ashley Wallen's choreography is incredible. The romantic subplot between Zac Efron and Zendaya is emotionally pleasing in an otherwise pointedly superficial film. The prepossessing couple turns in a marvellous aerial two-step sequence. Best of all, at full stretch, Keala Settle's bearded lady recalls the divine Mabel King.

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The Greatest Showman: misguided biopic of PT Barnum

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If you watched the trailer for this PT Barnum biopic and were startled and confused when Hugh Jackman burst into song, then prepare for greater bafflement. This energetic musical boasts plenty of razzle-dazzle and at least two proper toe-tappers from Pasek and Paul, the voguish songwriters behind La La Land's City of Stars.

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Hands down the most visually striking of DreamWorks Animation's releases, this lively CGI comedy (2008) is tailor-made for Jack Black, who voices Po, a sweet but timid roly-poly panda in ancient China who idolizes his martial arts heroes, the Furious Five. He sparks their resentment and contempt when, improbably, he's recognized as the incarnation of the fabled Dragon Warrior and begins training under their disapproving master (Dustin Hoffman). Tongue-in-cheek dialogue, inventive slapstick and fight sequences, and luminous production design make this a treat. John Stevenson and Mark Osborne codirected; Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, and Ian McShane round out the voice-over cast.

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Hands down the most visually striking of DreamWorks Animation's releases, this lively CGI comedy (2008) is tailor-made for Jack Black, who voices Po, a sweet but timid roly-poly panda in ancient China who idolizes his martial arts heroes, the Furious Five.

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We Have a Ghost (2023)

Rated PG-13 for language, some sexual/suggestive references and violence.

127 minutes

Cast

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Writer (based upon "Ernest" written by)

Writer (story by)

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We Have a Ghost movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert

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Rated PG-13 for language, some sexual/suggestive references and violence. 127 minutes Cast Director Writer (based upon "Ernest" written by) Writer (story by) Writer Cinematographer Editor Composer