pretty much what happened in the movie

Luisa Madrigal by Steven Thompson

Bruno Madrigal by Jaime Shelley

One of the major things I like about Agustín is not that he’s just an amazing goofy dad, but he’s extremely similar to his daughter Mirabel, when you really think about it.

According to director Jared Bush, Agustín is also a character who’s trying to fit in with the family, since he’s more city oriented because of his parents being from there. He’s goofy and clumsy JUST like Mirabel is as well, and I just love that. The thing that gets me though is that Agustín probably went through the same phase Mirabel did, where he was constantly trying to fit in and please Abuela, heck, Jared also confirmed that he wasn’t Alma’s first choice when it came to marrying Julieta, so I can only imagine him constantly feeling like he had to prove he was enough for his wife, enough for Alma, and it must have not helped his case since he’s a clumsy clutz all the time. Taking this into consideration only makes me love the scene where he stands up to Alma even more, because you could tell he was done with her crap, as well as not being enough for her just like Mirabel. The only sad thing is, during the events of the movie he’s accepted that he’s not perfect and embraced who he is, unlike his daughter, who at the time didn’t know her place and felt insecure. However, you feel so happy for both of them in the end, especially for Agustín himself, because his daughter had eventually seen herself the way he did all these years. ❤️‍🩹

I'm amased I didn't get a single post about day of candles being yesterday from the Encanto Fandom.

So I'll be that post.

Yesterday Alma and Pedro met while eating buñuelos share the word

What were some of the things you enjoyed about Encanto? I wanted to like it but it just didn't do it for me.

I thought it was really well-done. There are some story things that don’t sit right with me, and the message is not good, and some of the characterizations are a little irresponsible if you want to consider it a kid’s movie… but I’ll leave that for a different post.

I liked how every character’s design felt like they put so much thought into it. I don’t just mean the costumes (even though they’re genius. Obviously Mirabel’s outfit having little nods to each member of her family, looking like she made it herself just like every helpful thing she does is on her own without superpowers, details like that, we’re great.) I mean, the fact that every character could be separated from the rest of the cast, plopped in their own movie, and still “look” like the main character. At first I didn’t like that. It wasn’t very Bancroft of them. But then I realized:

That’s the point of the movie. Everybody’s special. Everybody’s a miracle on their own, everybody is the main character of their own story, everybody’s important. So they all look like and even have personalities interesting enough to have their own movie, each.

I thought a lot of the humor really hit! Maybe my favorite gag was when Bruno “falls” but then it turns out, no, he’s fine.

I do love the music. I do. I don’t know, I’ve never loved that all of Lin Manuel Miranda’s songs sound like…Lin Manuel Miranda…and all of the main characters sound like him when they sing…but still, I thought the songs had a feeling of unity to them.

I love that the heavy-lifting, muscly girl character sings a song about how she wishes she could put down the weight of expectations—specifically to be strong—and there’s this visual thing in the background. When she sings “but wait! If I could shake! This growing weight!” he donkeys she was carrying around suddenly are wearing makeup and look like unicorns. That could just as easily have been a choice made to accentuate the sudden calm, weightless vibe of the song…they’re dressed like unicorns because it’s a comedic way to communicate “dream sequence…” But I like to think it was also a nod to it being okay for Luisa to STOP being all “stronger than Gaston” and embrace actual soft girliness.

I think the chemistry between a lot of the family members was hit-or-miss, because Mirabel seems awkward around Luisa and her cousins, but much more realistic with Isabella or her mom. But I do think a lot of her interactions with her mom and Isabella are relatable, and realistic. Felt like the filmmakers were putting some genuine experiences into those conversations, and that always boosts the scene.

I think the main character is genuinely likeable—or at least, you can feel for her for a lot of the movie. I mean, sometimes she comes off as annoying to me, but I DON’T think you can walk away from it going, “the filmmakers didn’t know who Mirabel was, she was just whatever they needed her to be in the moment.” I think they had her characterization down: she’s always treading water to keep her head above feeling sorry for herself by refusing to feel sorry for herself, and focus on others.

That’s all kind of washed down the drain by the message being so self-focused, but that’s a post for another time.

Lastly, the written dialogue is pretty good! Again, I think that comes from having a clear idea of what your movie is trying to say, and who each of your characters are in order to nail that message—and Encanto does that, for better or worse.

It knows that it’s trying to say, “all your flaws, strengths, potential and failures make you who you are: and who you are is special.” I don’t love that. But it says it clearly and engagingly, even if…

…well, no, another post! 😅 another time!

Did Bruno befriend the rats before or after he disappeared? Because when he’s telling Mirabel about how he read the future after she didn’t get a gift, there isn’t a rat in sight. And if Bruno befriended the rats in the walls after he disappeared then that means Camilo saw him at some point after he vanished.

In ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’, Camilo says that Bruno is seven feet tall with rats along his back and to a kid, an adult can seem seven feet tall, and seeing disheveled, supposed-to-be-missing Bruno would have been a startling sight to little Camilo which explains why he sees him so grimly. And if Bruno only befriended the rats after he disappeared, then that means Camilo saw him sometime after that.

So I’ve said before that I have a few critiques with Encanto here and there, (even though the movie is amazing of course) and I felt like sharing one small critique today!

So since the movie starts out with Antonio’s ceremony, then goes from that to Isabela’s engagement to the ending, I feel as if we never really got to know any of the characters as THEMSELVES fully without the plot, if that makes sense. (For example, I don’t know if the way Isabela treated Mirabel was how she NORMALLY acted all her life, or was just acting like that for the events of the movie or not) What I mean is, since all these things in the movie are happening that would make the characters under stress or react to something, we never fully get to know how they are on a normal day, what they’re like in general without a big event happening. While it is easy to predict how some characters would act by what we’ve seen (like Mirabel and Félix would be upbeat, or Julieta and Luisa would be caring) I feel like the movie should have started out a few days before Antonio’s ceremony, so then we can get a feel of how each character and each dynamic is, or at least most of them since the family is so big. Like maybe it would open with Mirabel telling stories to the kids about what her family is like, (just like the song but longer) and we have a short montage of how things run in the casita, THEN skip to the day preparing for Antonio’s ceremony. Now you could say Encanto is one of those movies where you figure out what some of the characters and dynamics are like THROUGH the events of the movie, and yeah I agree, but I still feel like if the movie had given a little time to the characters and even the setting (because I’m curious on the village, mainly how the village views Mirabel personally and her family) before the plot moved forward, (because I will admit the beginning is a little fast paced to take in everything) it would have been better, better than it already WAS though that is lol.

Encanto is still one of my current obsessions, so I certainly plan on sharing more critiques because I have a few more, and the reason why I say “critiques” is because even though there’s a shitload to praise, I can’t really say what anyone else has already said about this movie, it’s just phenomenal in so many ways, at least to me, so it would kinda be boring if I kept saying “this movie is good” over and over again, so why not share a few nitpicks and stuff I had right? So stay tuned for that, though I probably will praise it from here and there once and awhile.

Also I don’t know how this fandom is, so I’m a little scared to be honest to share critiques in general with this movie since it’s so huge, so please do not harass in the comments! I love this movie to bits but I still would love to share personal issues I had in the near future! ❤️

This is my magnus opus.

basically I think it would go something like this if mirabel started arguing with casita💀

Mirabel & Luisa by Jin Kim

Bruno Madrigal by thetinytaco

So someone on twitter found new concept art of Mirabel. GOD I LOVE HER SO MUCH SHE’S ADORABLE I WANT MORE OF HERR. 😭💕

I LOVE UUUU, BABY!!! ❤️🦎

Check out how cute these are!!

My friend makes them 💕💕

I really like the symbolism of the process of Bruno’s visions. The sand representing the sands of time, constantly shifting, with no defined shape. But then, when Bruno has a vision, the sand condenses into a glass tablet, cementing the future. And though that future can sometimes have more than one possibility, like the many ways glass refracts light, those are the only possibilities, unless the glass is shattered completely