Well, that didn't work out. The kids saw it with their aunt in the theater the weekend before Christmas, when my wife and I needed that Saturday to do serious packing at our old house. Although the younger one made it clear he was eager to watch it again, the older one has lately been proclaiming that he doesn't like to watch movies more than once.
The bigger issue, though, was that my wife saw it as an even more special viewing than I did, not to be watched merely at home on Disney+. She wanted to go to the theater with my younger one to see it -- a trip I knew would never happen, given how the movie became scarce in cinemas the moment it debuted on Disney+.
By the time we actually did see it, two Fridays ago, I felt like I'd missed the boat. I don't know if I'd have liked Encanto better either in the cinema or watching it on Christmas, but on Friday night, January 14th, it really went in one ear and out the other. A pleasant viewing experience to be sure, but something I didn't feel inclined to think about again the moment it was over.
Until I came to grips with just what a phenomenon this movie actually is.
The first thing that caught me by surprise was when my son had his best friend to visit us in our new house. After the end of the playdate I took them both back on the 30-minute drive to our old neighborhood to drop him off. In the car, they were both singing the lyrics to the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno," as though they'd bought the soundtrack and listened to it on repeat. I mean, that's how we would have learned a song from a movie in the old days. They must have learned it watching the song on YouTube, or possibly multiple viewings of the movie, though I could only vouch for my son's two.
My son didn't know all the lyrics, as he actually couldn't get a lot further than this one particular part about the wedding day. But I was measuring its effect on him not by his success learning the lyrics but by the strength of his enthusiasm. That the knowledge and enthusiasm were mirrored by his friend -- whom he hadn't seen once since his first viewing of Encanto -- suggested to me that this Encanto phenomenon was a thing that was "sweeping the nation," as the saying used to be.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad these two white kids are gravitating toward a movie about brown people. That's really good.
But me personally, I don't get it. I thought Encanto was animated well, has some genuine magic, and certainly has some catchy songs -- I have to admit "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is a bit of an ear worm. But some kind of new classic? Hardly.
I can't decide what it is that prevents me from connecting with the movie. Maybe it's that it doesn't go outside of this one small town where the action takes place. Maybe I don't find the characters very interesting. Maybe I've seen one too many movies lately with a character named "Abuela."
Everyone else? They seem to think of this movie the way I think of Tangled.
As one example: "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is near the top of the pop charts. That's unusual for a song from a movie, especially a song that's sung by the cast as a kind of diegetic music, not the non-diegetic songs that have been breakouts after their inclusion in other movies (see: "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic, "Secret Garden" from Jerry Maguire).
Anyway, Wikipedia says it has the highest peak on the U.S. pop charts (#2) of any Disney song from the 21st century. It's a catchy song but I never would have guessed it would break out like this. I guess Lin-Manuel Miranda tips the scales a bit.
But it's not just the music that seems to have resonated with my son, his friend, and countless others out there. Earlier today my son was watching some YouTube video where the YouTuber was doing a deep dive into the characters and their motivations, like this was some really rich text whose finer points needed to be parsed and analyzed.
Really? Encanto?
I have Disney+, so maybe I need to watch it again when it isn't three days before I'm closing my list from the previous year and I'm not completely film-exhausted. That can't entirely account for it, though -- a movie I saw two days before that (Drive My Car) and one I watched the day after (The Tragedy of Macbeth) both made my top ten. So it wasn't just movie fatigue that caused Encanto to make no impression on me. My top ten was still vulnerable and still changing.
Maybe I just need to look back to my earlier reference to Tangled to explore this better. Maybe there is only room in our hearts for one new Disney classic. Maybe if you love Tangled -- or Frozen or Moana -- you don't get the hype about Encanto. Me, I don't get the hype about those other films, and Encanto is just the most recent -- making it more of the latest example of a trend, not a strange phenomenon unto itself.
I've gone back to watch Moana and I still don't like it much better. I think I only saw Frozen that one time. I like both films, but it's never going to be more than that.
The difference with Encanto is that I do see the bones for loving it, I just haven't gotten there yet.
Maybe after my son's current obsession dies down a bit, we can talk about Bruno again a couple months from now and I'll finally see the light.
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