Strange World

Voices of: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu, Karan Soni, Alan Tudyk, Nik Dodani
Directed by: Don Hall, Qui Nguyen
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure
2022

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal) has turned away from the explorer lifestyle that ruined the relationship with his missing father (Dennis Quaid), but when their livelihood is threatened, he reluctantly embarks on a journey with his son (Jakoukie Young-White) to save their community.

Review:

Tim: I'm not sure if you can call Disney's Strange World anything other than a disappointment. The film might not be bad (it's fairly decent), but it's the least effective film Disney Animation has released in the past decade. That's discouraging. Now, to be fair, it's hard to maintain any kind of winning streak in Hollywood. Over its history, Disney has released far worse films than this one. Unfortunately, it's so clearly of a lower tier than all of their recent releases that you just have to wonder what happened.

I never really cared about this movie. It lost me pretty early on. It just didn't feel like the best storytelling. It throws a lot at the audience early on, gives us lackluster characters, and takes us on a journey that feels middling from start to finish. There's definitely some positive qualities, so the movie at the end feels decent, but the weaknesses definitely outweigh the strengths.

I do want to comment on the film's attempts at better representation. I'm a big fan of Hollywood at least trying to make the movies released look more like the world in which they release them. That translates into movies with more diversity in race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. For some people (bigots, mostly) this is a problem. They lament that straight, white, mostly men no longer have a stranglehold in media. Those people are awful. Strange World takes a big leap forward in terms of representation and that is always a good thing. I appreciated that about the film. The only downside is that the script handles it clumsily. It feels like so much of the focus is on how representative the characters are, verses just telling an authentic story about diverse human beings. I think the film makers got caught up in this aspect of the film. To some extent, I get why Disney would be nervous about this (again, a lot of bigots out there). But the way the movie handles this is clumsy. It feels forced at times- "look, even the dog has a disability!" I'm not suggesting Disney stop trying in this area- it desperately needs to keep working on it. It's simply in this case, it wasn't handled effectively enough and it distracts some from the story.

The story itself isn't much better. It's interesting to see such a science fiction focused story from Disney. It feels like a bit too much, at times. The characters eventually get to the titular "strange world" and it's indeed strange. However, the "regular", non-strange world is kind of strange, too. It resembles our world but obviously isn't, so the contrast between the two worlds doesn't feel quite as big as it should. There's definitely some nice moments throughout the film- the revelation of what's beyond the seas or whatever was quite interesting, I really enjoyed that. There's some fun, intense moments of adventure peril sprinkled throughout. But, it ultimately feels like so much is thrown at the audience and much of it doesn't stick. The most memorable thing about the film that there's a strange world. Anything more specific than that doesn't really land as powerfully as it needed to.

I also wasn't a big fan of the characters. They were decent, but a bit too one-dimensional. I don't feel any desire to see them again, so in some ways, the bad box office here is good for me- there will likely never be a sequel. Searcher Clade is probably the closest thing to a main protagonist. He has a big conflict with his father, Jaeger. Jaeger just wants to explore and he wants his son to follow in his footsteps. Searcher wants to be a farmer. We see their relationship dysfunction, then we move forward to see Searcher struggling with his relationship with his own son, Ethan. Ethan I guess wants to be more like his grandfather? I don't know, but the common issue with these relationships seems to be Searcher. I jest, but while the movie works hard to try and create relationship conflict throughout the movie, it all feels very obvious and simplistic. It was a decent attempt that ultimately fails. None of the Clade family dynamics are all that interesting. None of the characters are especially memorable.

I thought the voice cast was fine, although it hurts when there's less effective characters to work with. I really like Jake Gyllenhaal, but I couldn't connect with his character here. Much of that is the writing, but it felt like his performance was slightly uninspired as well. I just don't believe Gyllenhaal will look back fondly on this role. I love that he was reunited with Dennis Quaid as his father, going back to their The Day After Tomorrow roots. Quaid's voice felt gruff and aged. I don't know if I would have recognized it as him if I hadn't read about it. Quaid brings energy to the role and Jaeger is at least an interesting character. Jaboukie Young-White felt bland as Ethan. His character felt so boring and one-note to me. He was a drag on the movie. Gabrielle Union doesn't get enough to do, with her underdeveloped character. The same can be said for Lucy Liu- she does effective work, but is limited in her role. I always like hearing Karan Soni. The cast as a whole felt average, but there were really no standouts.

The visuals for the film were fine- Disney knows how to animate a vibrant, colorful world. It was pretty fun to see the different creatures depicted and the final explanation of everything makes you rethink much of the film. I don't think the little blob thingy was as memorable as the movie believed it was, but it's fine.

Most news reports focused on the failure of Strange World. That's unfortunately the movie's legacy. Some of this had to do with the confusion around the theatrical/Disney+ release window (I never considered going to a theater for a second to see this). But mostly, the movie just looked skippable. From the first trailer, there was nothing very compelling about this movie. That is exactly how the movie turned out, too. It's a bit disappointing to see a movie like this, especially coming on the heels of Encanto, a major Disney success. I suppose we can't be too hard on the animation studio- you won't be successful every time out. However, this film does break a 9-film streak of good-to-great Disney movies. That's disappointing and we'll have to see where Disney goes from here.

The final note on Strange World- not a bad movie, but while decent, it has too many mediocre parts. It gives the worst people out there a chance to blame its failure on Disney being "woke". That's not why this is a disappointing movie. It's just poorly made. I expected more from a vet like Don Hall. Disney has done worse movies than this, but not lately.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Treasure Planet, Atlantis: The Lost Empire