One thing that's easy to miss with Isabella is that she looks almost exactly like her grandma and her boyfriend looks like her grandpa.  Grandma's trying to relive her life through Isabella.  

You can also see earlier signs of her not being allowed to be imperfect.  When grandma is asking Dolores about the proposal, a mis-colored flower shows up in Isabella's hair, which her grandma discards.

You know Louisa has been taught to minimise her problems when she sings "a light wind blows" when an actual tornado is coming their way. Little touches like that are so clever in this film!

How cruel Isabella's prophecy must have seemed. Imagine always having to be perfect, hide what you want, and who you really are. Being told that you'd live the life of your dreams and then living miserably as the person everyone else wants you to be, trying to convince yourself this is what you want.

if you watch close you can see how Isabella grows one white flower when she's startled about the five babies revelation, and Abuela plucks it out. And then in What Else Can I Do, when she first gets color on her dress, she looks to Mirabel for approval/reassurance and Mirabel instantly supports her, so then Isabella leans into it and gets color everywhere. And the only times Abuela talks to Luisa or Dolores when it's time for them to use their power. This movie is amazing and I cry every time.

I don’t know if you noticed, but when the grandfather died, and the candle made a safe place for them, everyone turned to the grandmother. So not only did she just lose her husband, leaving her a grieving single mother with three babies, but everyone was looking to her as their savior. I can’t imagine being so afraid, so alone, and having the responsibility of all those lives on your shoulders. Feeling like you have to live up to, and be worthy of, your husband’s sacrifice.

P.S. The colorful river is a real river in Colombia. It’s called Caño Cristales.

I love how Antonio needed Mirabelle to walk as emotional support, and then at the end, the roles are switched and he walks with her. And how he's the one that gives her the gift of the knob just as she gave him the gift with the plush makes me tear up every time.

lets not forget the mvp of this movie:

Jorge. He makes the spackle.

Abuela: "We have a new gift!"
Oscar: "Excuse me, every child is a gift!"

For Encanto, I'm always struck with the "story told vs reality lived" part of it. The tale that starts the movie vs the one told by the river. The stoic woman she wants the world to see her as vs the utter wreck she actually was in the moment.

The part of We Don’t Talk About Bruno where all of the singers are woven together is actually called a madrigal. Just like the song, the family itself works at its best when they all work together

This is a modern example of how good a musical can be. Exceeded all expectations I had for this film

Something I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention but Abuela’s line in the beginning of the movie “sometimes the best thing some of us can do is step aside-“ is super foreshadowing in that Abuela herself is who needs to step aside and let Mirabel heal the family

I love how in the end Mirabel finally got her door! She was just trying the wrong one. Her door is the front door, because her bringing together her entire family is her gift.

one of the theories about why Mirabel has no gift is that she is meant to become the next Abuela. Abuela doesn't have any powers and the house responds to her, but not to most of the other characters. Mirabel however is the same, she doesn't have a gift and the house responds to her as well.

10:00 What I always joked was that Mirabel had a gift and it was freezing time to sing a song about her feelings LOL.

Lin Manuel Miranda wrote most of the music for encanto. You know the guy who wrote Hamilton. It’s an incredible soundtrack.
“We don’t talk about Bruno” was a huge commercial success. number one on billboard and Spotify. “Dos Oruguitos” is the most beautiful song in the whole movie. It was nominated for an Oscar for best original song.

Dos Oruguitas, the song that played during the flashback, is one of if not the most beautiful song I've heard in any Disney movie to date.

31:04 Oscar reacting so strong defending Mirabel while all us Hispanic kiddos expecting Abuela to slap the girl for talk back. 😅 Hey, it's been a year since I last watched this. God bless!

What sucks is that these types of family dynamics really exist. Having one non-special person (the black sheep) in a family and they are constantly verbally and emotionally abused. Some never recover from that type of trauma. They become people pleasers, or worse. The hardest thing is that many never get the "Disney happy ending". No resolution or understanding and repentance from the abusers. Some people never fully let it go (some never figure out how to let any of it go)  and it weighs them down their entire life.

I love how this movie talks about generational trauma and cycles that keep getting repeated and passed on from one person to another.
After Abuelo Pedro's sacrifice, Abuela Alma understood that the only way to keep the family safe was through sacrifice, so the culture of the family Madrigal was primarily based on the idea that everyone in the family had to sacrifice their wants, needs and overall happiness to honor the great sacrifice that was made for them.
Like to cope with the trauma of the sacrifice, they kept demanding and repeating the sacrifice in their own lives and in the lives of their loved ones, which is ironic, but it's what frequently happens in real life: some of our traumas have so much influence in our decisions and behavior, that we end up repeating and reliving them. It's not until we resignify the trauma that we can break the cycles and stop their repetition.
In the end, while Mirabel looks at the rubble of their house, she starts the song All Of Me by saying, "Look at this home, we need a new foundation" 'cause she understood that the old foundation, the old idea which was the base of their culture, was what broke their home in the first place. They couldn't just build it again without first changing its foundation, so that's what they literally do: they rebuild their encanto, basing it on ideas like community, solidarity, their own effort and also their own wellbeing.