Encanto

Encanto is a warm, funny family musical that understands how much damage a household can do while congratulating itself on being close. Directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush concentrate on the Madrigals, a Colombian family whose magical gifts leave Mirabel wondering what she is supposed to contribute. We recommend it, with a reservation about how briskly it handles feelings it has spent time making complicated. Its most useful question is a simple one: what happens to children who think they have to earn their place at home?

Stephanie Beatriz gives Mirabel enough energy and humour to keep that question from becoming a lecture. The character’s eagerness to be useful is affecting because it sits so close to embarrassment; we recognise the effort involved in trying not to look left out. We felt protective of her as the family’s extraordinary abilities made her ordinariness seem like a personal failing. The performance makes that hurt clear without reducing Mirabel to someone who needs to be pitied.

Ian Gooding’s production design gives the family a home with enough character to compete with its occupants. The living house is a good comic idea, and it makes the shared home an active participant in the family business. Cinematographers Alessandro Jacomini, Daniel Rice and Nathan Warner keep faces readable amid the flowers and busy colour, so the visual abundance rarely becomes exhausting. There is care in the hair textures and skin tones, and it matters in a story asking us to distinguish individuals inside one large family.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songs draw on Colombian music and hip-hop, and their restless rhythms suit a family anxious about keeping up appearances. The singing allows characters to admit worries that ordinary conversation keeps concealed, which gives the musical numbers something useful to do. Germaine Franco’s score helps the quieter stretches retain warmth, although the songs supply the musical character we remember. Not every tune is equally durable, but there is pleasure in hearing a family musical let nervous energy shape its sound.

Jeremy Milton’s editing keeps the crowded household manageable, though the pace sometimes works against the writing. Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith’s screenplay notices how praise can become pressure, then occasionally hurries past the consequences. We wanted longer with the awkwardness, especially when affection and resentment belong to the same person. At 102 minutes, the film accommodates a large family and several musical moods, but leaves less space for people to sit with something uncomfortable. Some of the emotional repair feels too quick.

Within family fantasy, giving the person without the special ability the central role is a welcome choice. The film is interested in the daily cost of being impressive, and it is generous towards relatives who make one another unhappy without setting out to do so. The Colombian setting matters, too: the variety of faces and the musical influences give the family an identity beyond the lesson it is meant to teach. Watch it with the family, then give whoever has been doing the organising a night off.