Strange World review – Living here just isn’t the place

In a strange turn of events, Strange World has arrived in cinemas with barely any fanfare. A Disney theatrically released animated film is usually an annual event right up there with Pixar releases and MCU entries. And this new movie is led by Don Hall, the director and co-writer of the critically acclaimed Raya and the Last Dragon fame.

Ignoring the radio silence from Disney in the marketing department, Strange World has all the hallmarks of a solid family adventure with a charismatic cast and an on-brand premise. But despite all the ambition and stocking up on essential supplies, this family adventure struggles to get off the porch to explore even the front garden. Even with very good intentions and the promise of new discoveries, Strange World never takes off, and instead falls back on ideas and story elements we’re all far too familiar with.

It’s been 25 years since the great adventurer and hero Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid) left his young son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), to traverse the mountains that surround their hometown of Avalonia. Searcher, now a local hero himself for discovering a new energy source, is a farmer leading a quiet, non-adventuring life with his wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union) and his own son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White).

All is peaceful right up until Avalonia’s president Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu) calls on Searcher and his family to join her on a quest to save the town from an unknown threat – an adventure that will propel them across a mysterious and breathtaking landscape very different from what they know. Along the way, some new friends are made and some family ties are rediscovered, prompting Searcher to contemplate his role as a father and what it means to uphold his family legacy.

Right during the opening prologue, Strange World starts to fall off its axis with very shaky character motivation. The rift between Searcher and his father comes off as extremely forced and not backed up by the circumstances that precede it. What detracts from that rift further, and one of the film’s biggest running issues, is some of the worst spoken dialogue heard in a Disney movie in a long time. Characters recycle talking points throughout and state obvious facts, not letting their emotional or even facial cues do any of the work during a scene.

It’s a shame because these are very likable characters. Gyllenhaal sells it as a man who, as a child, was forced into making a difficult decision but one that demonstrated the importance of family. He and his wife have a charming dynamic while his relationship with Ethan, prioritised so as to not repeat the mistakes of his past, is given the proper attention it deserves. As per current Disney animated storytelling trends, there is no central villain in Strange World, instead focusing on characters working through a family feud while being lost in unfamiliar surroundings.

While on the subject of characters, as per all the reporting, Strange World is a genuine step forward in terms of Disney’s LGBTQI+ representation. Ethan is not only openly gay but his sexuality is normalised in the Clade household to the point that it is not even a point of contention, or even discussion. The film features scenes of him valiantly attempting to talk to his crush, a young man from Avalonia, and discussing his feelings with his family members. It is heartwarming, sincere and it works.

There are some other elements in the film that also work well. The side characters, including a three-legged sheepdog and a blue blob, are a lot of fun, and the main attraction is, of course, the strange world itself. Fauna and flora have been given the Jules Verne treatment so that they pop off the screen with a colour palette that reinforces the sense of a vivid, toxic ecosystem – a stark contrast from the one our heroes are used to. As expected, the animation is impressive and the decision to make character designs and movements more on the cartoonish side is the right way to go. As opposed to the emotional haymakers of Disney’s previous animated flick, Encanto, this is a light-hearted and easy watch.

A watch that you’ll probably forget a day later, however. With credits like Maya and the Last Dragon, and, most notably, Big Hero 6, director Don Hall clearly knows how to put together an action scene. Strange World has too few high-octane moments, though, resulting in fleeting moments of action. Whereas the dialogue is overly verbose, the visual narrative relies far too much on padding out the runtime with wide shots of pink vistas and glowing caverns. It looks great, but for a pulp adventure, slow pacing is a death knell.

There are too many extended scenes of family interactions in Strange World that come off as needless and at the expense of moving the story forward. More running, more shouting, more interactions with the bizarre realm our heroes have found themselves in would have done wonders, especially given all the elements alluding to the throwback adventure genre, especially Henry Jackman’s musical score. Towards the end, Strange World reveals it actually has a message, but it’s not delivered with any subtlety, making it yet another forgettable aspect of the film.

With Strange World, you can’t shake off the feeling that you’re watching something that sticks too closely to the Disney rulebook as it has a little bit of Treasure Planet DNA and it riffs heavily on Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It took a decade for humans to realise those were great films so maybe this one is ahead of its time as well. In the here and now, though, Strange World forgets that the journey is more important than the destination.