ENCANTO

Despite the standard Disney ingredients, chances are slim that future generations will look back on the film as a picture that shaped their childhood.

Encanto is Disney Animation's 60th feature film and it contains nearly all the ingredients that are staples of the 59 previous ones.

There is a strong-willed female protagonist, a curse that has to be reversed and the recurring theme of the importance of family. The picture also builds on the long tradition of exquisite visuals in Disney movies, with vibrant colours and free-flowing camera moves. And yet Encanto is one of the least memorable animated movies the House of Mouse has released in the past decade.

The story merely re-treads all too familiar coming-of-age ground, while the songs Lin-Manuel Miranda penned are hardly earworms. Despite another concerted effort to bring some much-needed diversity into the Disney fold, the picture just feels like the umpteenth variation on a formula that has proven its worth but is lacking the magic ingredient to engage you emotionally.

I'm sure that plenty of kids - and even a big chunk of adults - won't mind and lap up everything Encanto has to offer. But chances are slim that future generations will look back on the film as a picture that shaped their childhood.

release: 2021

director: Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Charise Castro Smith

starring: Stephanie Beatriz, Maria Cecilia Botero, John Leguizamo, Mauro Castillo