Encanto 4K 2021 Ultra HD 2160p

In the center of the plot is the most ordinary Colombian girl named Mirabel. Even too common. The fact is that absolutely all of her relatives have magical powers, and for some reason she alone was deprived of her abilities. But it is she who has to save the Madrigal family from danger.

Encanto 4K Review
During the Colombian revolution, Alma Madrigal and her husband fled their hometown, fleeing the soldiers. They were overtaken near the river: the husband sacrificed himself, and the woman's grief materialized in the form of a magic candle, thanks to which high mountains suddenly appeared, cutting off Alma and other refugees from the rest of the world.

Many years later, she lives with her children and grandchildren in a living villa named Kasita (she knows how to rebuild on the go and even communicate with the help of floorboards) and looks after the small cozy town of Enkanto, since then hidden from civilization. Upon reaching a certain age, each family member undergoes a ritual: a candle gives him superpowers, and another room appears in the house. Isabel Madrigal is incredibly strong, Juliet can create plants from nothing, and little Felix talks to animals. Only once the ceremony failed - the granddaughter Mirabelle did not get any strength, and now she feels insecure against the background of wonderful relatives. Therefore, when strange cracks suddenly appear in Kasite, it is Mirabel who decides to investigate what exactly is happening with their family magic. To do this, she needs to find Uncle Bruno, an outcast of the family who knows how to predict the future (unfortunately, not always rosy).

It's strange to realize that Disney's goliath animation is coming out without any fuss, almost imperceptibly, hiding behind the bigger names of the already not very saturated covid distribution. Even Raya and the Last Dragon, which failed at the box office, felt more interesting to the public. Either people are tired of the monolithic style of Disney cartoons, where each character looks like a modification of the previous one, or the new ideological direction of the studio is not working, which, starting with Moana, is trying to reformat the myths of different countries into a comfortable family movie.

This time the eyes of the producers fell on Colombia, and in "Encanto" the setting was not even based on national legends, but (suddenly) the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. The same story about the settlement of people who fled from the revolution, the same saga about a large family, which is pursued by a certain conditional "curse." Plus songs, colorful magic and a plot in the spirit of "Aerobatics" - about an ordinary person without abilities, who is under pressure from the uniqueness of his family. Less violent scenes of executions and incest.

In "Encanto" the action almost never gets out of the house, and even the search for Bruno - for which, it would seem, you will have to go to that very terrible outside world - takes place entirely within four walls. Kasita becomes a whole universe for Madrigal, the family conflict is concentrated inside a closed, conserved system, from which there is no way out. Even when the path from the village surrounded by rocks is open (for reasons that we would rather keep silent about), no one is particularly interested in it. The heroes are still marking time on the border, as if indicating that solving internal problems does not require any adventures or any great discoveries - it is enough just to talk.

This is, in its own way, a very curious move - from whom, and from the Disney cartoon, we certainly did not expect a chamber drama. If, of course, one can consider it a "chamber" space where, on the scale of a room, a whole forest or a huge scary tower with a spiral staircase to the sky can magically fit. But it is precisely this isolation that interferes with the picture most of all. In "Encanto" there is no bright external conflict that would reflect the climate within the family, which means that there are no particularly exciting events. Here everything happens somehow by itself: any problem is solved by the power of love, and even irreconcilable sisters instantly draw closer - just sing a song.

It's strange after the same "Rapunzel" or even "Moana", where the heroes joked about the desire to sing at any dramatically important moment, to see a film with such a condo and long outdated form of a Disney musical. In "Encanto" songs are almost the only way to move the plot forward, and only in the musical numbers there are hints of creative animation and some interesting visual solutions. It is difficult, of course, to blame the creators for having so much confidence in the melodies of Lin-Manuel Miranda (who to trust if not him), but still their devotion to the classical structure is tiresome.

In a sense, "Encanto" perfectly reflects its time - it is an infinitely comfortable, almost conflict-free film, where there are no bad people at all, and song therapy works better than any weapon. An ideal cinema of an era in which the only correct position is to be for everything good, and any problems are taught to be solved on the bed of a psychologist. Finally, there is a huge manifesto of "commonness": from superpowers only internal trauma, great responsibility and great strength are not needed by anyone, always a simple person who only knows how to listen wins.