On Encanto
Encanto was not quite what I expected. Strictly as a Disney movie it came off to me as a bit of a dud: paper-thin characters, no true hook song, and a resolution that was so pro forma it's hard to consider it a twist. It surprises me that, reportedly, toddlers are running around singing the songs; Lin-Manuel did his normal magic, but there is definitely no "Let It Go" moment in there.
Where is does succeed is as a sort of fantastical critique of fantasy itself: the Disney movie in Encanto was Abuela's struggle as a young mother. The movie instead focuses on the aftermath of happily ever after, which is a pretty damn dark thing for Disney to put onto the screen.
As the younger characters were quite literally handed their self-actualization as a divine gift and inheritance, they became parodies and corruptions of their fairytale and cinematic counterparts: the princess bride, Hercules/Maui, Quasimodo in the basement, magical manipulators of elements... even the helpful mice in the walls, for goodness' sake.
And at the center is Abuela, who works well enough as the villain of the movie prior to her redemptive turn. Taking the figurehead role in perpetuating the magic, she became the root and engine of its corruption; the "ever after" became more important than the "happily". She occupies the inherent conservativity of prosperity: don't rock the boat, don't stretch the seams.
In an era of reboots and re-imaginings taking the place of greenfield world-building, Encanto reads to me as a cry for help from a gilded cage: how can we portray nuance, inequity, class struggle, and all the other stuff we're supposed to shove into these movies when everything has to be so damn perfect at the end?
In the end, everybody learned a lot but nobody really sacrificed anything. Where Abuelo died for the family in the proto-plot, the only casualty of the main thread was Casita, who died to... show the family that the house wasn't the important part, except they needed to revive the house to revive the family and thus revive the magic?
The real clever twist would have been a step back from this lack of real stakes and take this as a commentary on the ultimate corruptibility of human nature: Morgoth gave way to Sauron, but the story ultimately repeated. Can Mirabel avoid the temptation to become the tragic conservative? There isn't as much of a movie in that, but it would be a better story.