This beautifully animated would-be Pixar flick had tears streaming down my face. Imagine being Lin-Manuel Miranda and having the ability to craft song after song of clever lyrics that artfully advance the plot, provide character development and are catchy enough that you can’t wait to listen to them again after the movie is over.
My only warning would be that the lyrics are Miranda-paced as usual, so you probably want to turn on the subtitles to catch everything you need to know…especially since some of the songs have a mix of English and Spanish words that can be hard to parse. For this reason and the somewhat existential themes of the story, it required quite a bit of explanation for my precocious five-year-old to completely understand what was going on.
Nevertheless, I am queuing up the soundtrack on Spotify as I type this, and I highly recommend Encanto as one of the best animated Disney films in recent years.