Encanto (2021)

 “You can’t hurry the future!”

This film, the latest Disney behemoth, has become ubiquitous over the last few months. Little Miss Llamastrangler is watching little else right now, and nor are any of her friends. There is, I suppose, a wider worry about Disney’s increasing cultural domination, but in itself and in the fact that it tends to spread the rather conservative social mores of a modern America where one of the two main political parties, the Republicans, is openly fascist.

Thing is, though, none of that stuff can stop me admitting that this film is bloody good. Exceptionally so, in fact. It’s a splendid thing that Disney is doing a magic realist film for kids in the Latin American tradition, and setting it in Colombia, a country that deserves to be known more for Gabriel Garcia Marquez than for cocaine.

This is a wonderful little tale of a magical house that gives “gifts” to its family such as healing with a meal or talking to animals, but also of the need to be kind to one another and not forget to make sure everyone is ok and happy with their lives. The songs are wonderful, and the best of them is a superb yet catchy warning about the great dangers of stress and overwork.

Kids love it; the characters are great and the film is magical in more ways than one. And it’s great to get a light shone on to magic realism by popular culture. This film is quite, quite brilliant.