First Impressions: Encanto (2021)

 

I think it's fair for me to say I didn't really have high hopes for Encanto. I don't watch trailers, or at least I try not to, so I had no idea what Encanto was going to be like going in, I thought it was going to be another Disney magical adventure flick, another movie that had the elements of Frozen and Tangled and Raya, with some okay songs, cute jokes and animation that looked good on screen, but really needed the Theatre to show it off.

So, I think it is also fair to say that Encanto surprised me, in fact it really surprised me. It surprised me so much, it may actually become my new favourite movie in the Disney animated canon, and honestly, Disney's modern animated movie output has been, well I would not say mediocre, it has been floundering a bit. Frozen was fine, Big Hero 6 was derivative, Zootopia wasn't anything special, Ralph Breaks the Internet was cute, Frozen II was okay and Raya and the Last Dragon and I have a complicated relationship, not that any of those movies were bad, but I can't say I really loved them. I loved Encanto.

What really surprised me was the music, and yeah, it was Lin-Manuel Miranda so it was going to be good, but holy cow I did not expect every song to be fun, memorable and enjoyable. Seriously, think about it, every song in this movie was fantastic, I can't think of any duds, and they didn't have the obvious big pop hit, they didn't have the "Why Should I Worry?" or the "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" or the "Let It Go", each song was just as spectacular as the last and I really want the soundtrack, in fact, if I find it I am totally getting it on vinyl, it's that good.

I was also invested in the characters and their arcs, I won't give away too much, but this story relies on how well written these characters are, how strong they are and how well they work off each other. I don't think I loved an ensemble cast in a Disney movie since... oh jeez, Robin Hood? The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh? Like, every character I either loved immediately, or grew to love and not just like, or tolerate, but full on, "if these characters had a series of shorts I would watch them" love.

One thing I also got to bring up is the animation. Yeah, it looks good, it looks great, the colour palette is lush, vibrant and lively, and when it needs to it can get dark and grey, but there was this one moment towards the end, and all I had to say when I saw it was "That's beautiful", not "That would look better in the theatre", not "That looks nice", full on "That's beautiful", I don't think I've said that about a Disney movie in a long time, really I don't think I've said that about any modern animated movie in a long time.

I mean, what is there not to love about this movie? It looks great, the characters are all fun, it can get very tense and one scene even made me feel the anxiety and tension. The cast was perfect, the music was fantastic, I'm really hoping that when I come back to this movie, my reaction stays the same, because I would hate for this movie to be another Frozen, where the flaws become more apparent the more times you watch it. I really want this movie to be as good as it was on first viewing because it was just so good. Hands down, my favourite Disney movie in a long time, and a definite High Recommendation.

First Impressions: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2021)

 

You know, I completely missed the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series when it was big. I dunno, I just never thought the books would appeal to me. To be fair there are a lot of other book series I missed out on when they were big, I didn't read Harry Potter until like, Cursed Child was still brand new or something, and I still have not read The Hunger Games, and I have no plan to. Either way, I'm new to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I never read the books, I never watched the original movies, I've seen a few discussions of it online, but otherwise, I am unfamiliar with this franchise.

So, my initial thought is, am I the only one who is sick of the middle/high school stereotype of "Everyone is either a loser or a bully"? Because I am absolutely sick of it. This may just be because I am a 2000s kid, but my middle and high school experience is very different from the ones that media liked to portray it as. Yeah, I was never the "popular" kid, but I had my own cliques to hang around with, in fact that is kind of what happened, people just stuck around with their own cliques. It was nothing like the way media portrayed it as. Maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's a culture thing, maybe it's both, but I'm just sick of it.

Something else that bugged me was the mouth movement, I guess it was just that I didn't mesh with the style, but something about it just looked wrong. That being said, the rest of the film looks nice enough, very stylized to look like the book designs. Honestly, it makes me wonder if this is Disney's response to Captain Underpants. I mean four years is about standard for an animated project, and from what I'm reading the production of this movie was a little bit hectic, but it would not shock me if Disney kept this project alive because it could potentially be Disney's own Captain Underpants. Sometimes I wonder if Eisner really left the company.

Something else that really bothered me was the voice acting for the mother, it did not sound as high quality as the rest of the cast. It was really distracting, you go from a high quality recording to what sounds like a muffled home recording. Now, I'm unfamiliar with most of this cast, and they don't do too bad of a job in this movie, but something about the mother's audio really distracted me. What else was distracting was the length of the movie, it's not even a full hour long, and yeah I reviewed movies that were shorter, but it still surprised me that this movie was only fifty-eight minutes. Like, two minutes more and you'd get a full hour. With just under an hour, it makes me wonder why they didn't just chop this up and make it a mini-series. I mean, it's already kind of like a mini-series with different segments with their own main plot, it could have worked. Again it could be a production thing, but this should have been a miniseries.

Okay, for the full opinion on this movie, I kind of found it unwatchable. I did not find it that funny, and I did not find it that relatable. I found Greg to be kind of a pain of a character, like he says he wants his position in life to change immediately and I just can't muster up any kind of sympathy. I get that he is supposed to learn and get better, but I didn't want to see him get better, I wanted to get the movie over with quicker. Honestly, that is just a good summary of all my issues with this movie as a whole. It's not funny, not relatable, I hated the lead character, I didn't even think the ending was that satisfying, and a lot of things about it really distracted me from really enjoying it. Maybe I'll give the live-action movies a go someday, and see if they're better.

Isn't that just the worst way to discover a movie? Like, you watch something that you don't like, and like, almost out of spite look up the original stuff just to see if it was better. Like, that's not a good way to be introduced to something even if it ends up being good. Still, I can't recommend this one, maybe if you're a bigger fan of the books you might find something you like, but as for me, watching it just made me upset. So, I don't think this movie is one of the worst I've seen, it's still pretty bad.

Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse (2018) - Was it worth all the acclaim?

 

December, 2018, one of the most anticipated movies of all time was released into Theatres. This is rather strange when you consider that this was an animated feature, and a western animated feature at that. Yet, everybody that was into animation was excited for this movie, and everyone loved it. One of the highest rated animated films on Letterboxd, ninety-seven percent on Rotten Tomatoes, eighty-seven on Metacritic, best animated feature at the Academy Awards and African-American Film Critics Association, swept the Annie Awards, best Animated film at the British Academy Film Awards, Best Animated Feature Film Award at the Golden Globes, and so many other awards that it would just be a waste of time to name them all. Fifth highest grossing animated feature of 2018, and forty-seventh highest grossing animated feature of the 2010s. It got recognition and people loved it. Three years later, after all these years, was all of that praise warranted?

Miles Morales is a normal everyday kid, he's at a school he doesn't like, he is embarrassed by his dad, and he's awkward around some of his classmates. While hanging out with his uncle Aaron he is bitten by a radioactive spider, and he freaks out, especially since he also witnesses the death of the real Spider-Man and gets caught up in one of Kingpin's plots. However, by some freak accident, he is able to learn the ropes thanks to the help of some other Spider-heroes who similarly got caught in Kingpin's plot and dragged into Miles' universe. It is your standard superhero origins plot with the twist that he is helped by multiple alternate universe heroes, mostly Peter B. Parker and Gwen Stacey, but the film also has Spider-Noir, Penni Parker and Spider-Ham. I don't think this plot is going to really surprise you if you know the beats, but it's well written and flows well enough for that to not be an issue.

Okay so... I am not a big comic reader, I love Tintin comics and I am not unfamiliar with comic books, but I feel there is a large learning curve to them and they feel like a big commitment, so I am not going to go into a lot of detail on these characters. Overall I enjoyed them, Miles I feel has a more realistic arc of someone learning to be a superhero, he's in over his head, he gets anxious, he goes through the pains and prides of it all. The real key to his character is that, while he's trying to be Spider-Man, he only really gets it right when he incorporates his own identity into the persona. Peter B has a cute arc of his own which gets tied into his mentor relationship with Miles. I feel like they tried to give Gwen her own arc, about accepting friends after her tragedy, but I don't really think they pulled that off too well. Side characters are also really fun, Aunt May was fun, the other Spider-heroes were charming and Miles' family were really loving and caring. I do think Kingpin was kind of a bland, generic menace. Yeah they gave him a goal and a backstory, but I can't really think of any moment I was really intimidated or even that entertained by him. I quite liked the other villain of the movie, Olivia Octavius, she was the one with the more entertaining moments.

I gotta give some special credit to the voice acting, Shameik Moore did a wonderful job as Miles and I loved the fake voice he put on at the end as Spider-Man as to not give away his identity to his father. I think the rest of the cast was perfect, I took one look at Mahershala Ali and I thought "Yep, that was Aaron", it was like casting Kurt Russel as Wyatt Earp, and Brain Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Velez were perfect as Miles' parents, Lily Tomlin was almost unrecognizable as Aunt May, seriously how do I always fail to pick out her voice in a movie? John Mulaney and Nicolas Cage were also very perfect as Spider-Ham and Spider-Noir respectively, and the late Stan Lee made a posthumous cameo in this movie, one of his last.

Now let's talk about the animation. When I talked about the 2017 DuckTales series, I said that it looked like a comic brought to animation. Well, this movie is that, but with the budget of a cinematic venture. It looks really good, and it goes beyond the stylized characters and settings. The colours really pop, even when the entire screen is full of neon colours, it's all so beautifully done. I am a bit more forgiving towards 3D animation than some others might be, I don't think every 3D animated film could have been done in 2D, or at least done as well in 2D. While yes, this movie would look a lot more like a comic book if it was done in 2D, it would also have looked very different. Imagine this movie looking like 2017's DuckTales and you might start to see why 3D was the right choice for this movie. I also have to mention the use of different art styles for the different Spider-Heroes. Spider-Ham looking more cartoonish with brighter colours, Penni Parker being in a more anime style, and Spider-Noir being in a thick black and white colour scheme. Yet, they never felt too out of place. I think everyone agrees that the animation is the main selling point of the movie, but is that the only reason to see it?

Going back to the question I posed at the start, was this movie worth all of the acclaim it received? While I will not argue that this movie is perfect, because I don't think it is, I do think that this movie did earn all of the praise. While the animation is amazing, the movie does not sell itself on animation alone as it also has a well-done story, likeable characters, an excellent voice cast, and some really well done scenes and moments that stick in your head. I really have to give it to everyone behind this movie, it was a risk, sure comic book movies are getting more recognized now-a-days, but this was a comic book movie with a minority lead and was an animated movie from Sony Pictures Animation following a string of not so great releases. The fact that it was not only good, but also as good as it was, honestly do I even need to say that this movie is a High Recommendation? Is it perfect? No, but it is recognized as it is for a damn good reason.