Ever since competing animation studios such as Sony and Netflix have stepped up their game to make movies that would gain colossal success, Disney, who was once the most prominent pioneer for Animated Box Office hits that were also loved by critics and audiences, were sadly starting to become less and less reliant. Occasionally, they’ll have a decent hit here and there. Encanto, for sure, was a bright spot for the company. Still, many other Disney movies released around the same time didn’t have the same passion and care seen in the Disney Renaissance or the Disney Revival. One of those unfortunate movies is the 2022 box office bomb Strange World. It is A movie with a lot of promise with its animation and adventurous energy. Still, it sadly follows many storytelling cliches that add up after a while.
Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhall) was once an incredible adventure who used to tag along on daring quests with his father, Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid). However, after a fallout out between the two after Searcher discovers a green plant he calls Pando, Searcher decides to take the plant back and start a farming business. 25 years later, Searcher’s Pando business is booming and has started a family that includes his wife Maridian (Gabrielle Union), their teenage son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) and their three-legged dog Legend. One day, Searcher discovers that pando is dying and that the only way to figure out whats causing the problem is to travel to a strange new world where not everything is not what it seems, with the help of Jaegar who has been missing for decades, the Clade family much find out the source of the problem while navigating their new and unfamiliar surroundings.
The Story is the weakest element in this movie. I’m not saying it is terrible. It's cliched as it uses a familiar formula that has become very popular with many similar Disney and Pixar movies that came out around the same time. It's known as the generational trauma story, where something that has happened to a family in the past that causes a feud later affects future generations and must be healed. This storyline has already been used in many Disney and Pixar movies, such as Coco, Encanto, and Turning Red. The difference between Strange World and the others is that the films mentioned before have good pacing and exciting character dilemmas that are engaging to follow. Strange World’s story, though, is doing the same thing without much that is new or different, making it very formulaic to the point that it's not fun anymore. Conflicts in the movie are rushed, and the overall narrative is messy, with pacing that jumbles quite often and too quickly from one moment to the next. On a more positive note, I’ll credit that the film's passionate, adventurous energy is in the right place. This isn’t awful storytelling. It's just generic storytelling. There are some positives, but this is the kind of story that makes me wish I was watching better Disney films that have a similar tone and feel and are actually well-made in terms of story.
The Characters are all fine. They aren’t awful, but the majority of them barely had an impact on me. Searcher Clade, played by Jake Gyllenhall, is very bland and not very engaging. Unfortunately, His character arc from being a former adventurer to a farmer to again being an adventurer is not very well handled. His quirks are so minuscule that you could honestly replace him with someone else like Marlin from Finding Nemo and have a much more interesting character to follow. Dennis Quaid plays Jaeger Clade, Searcher’s father. As usual with these Generational Trauma stories, he goes through the motions of thinking he’s right and then releasing that he was wrong. Nothing else in his personality makes him memorable outside of his rebiolous persona. Jaboukie Young-White plays Ethan Clade, who is Searcher’s son. Ethan's purpose in this story is to be the gay character so Disney can claim that they are being representative. Gay characters are complicated to get right, and while they don’t do an insulting job, it does not help that he can be somewhat troublesome and a bit annoying, which doesn’t help make his character any better. The only character I enjoyed was Splat, the walking blob that joins the heroes in the adventure. He's the best character because he's the only one who can’t talk, and the writers have to rely on his actions to bring him to life. Many characters leave more or less of an impression depending on the persona. Still, all characters could have used some work to make them stand out amongst Disney’s most iconic characters.
The Animation is what makes this movie feel worth it. According to director Don Hall, some of the biggest influences for the look of this film include old pulp magazines and science fiction works such as “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and “Fantastic Voyage.” The movie's visuals are accurate to the title of the film cause it's a bizarre world, unlike anything most people have seen. I can tell the animators at Disney had a lot of fun creating this imaginative world with plenty of things to look at. The human designs are okay, but the creature designs are where this film shows creativity. Of course, you have the cute side character, Splat, who is very well animated and has a lot of expressions just from how he acts and poses. Some other tremendously imaginative creatures are too complex to describe but are unlike anything you’ve seen in an animated movie beforehand. The backgrounds use a lot of pink and maroon colors to fill the backgrounds, and the way the world is designed makes everything feel chaotic and sometimes unpredictable. Even before we enter the strange world, our heroes start out in a very clean sci-fi and rual-like environment with flying vehicles adding to the unique atmosphere the movie tries to create. This, in my opinion, is what Pixar’s Lightyear should have been. These visuals are beyond imaginative, and while it's a shame that the story and characters could not match up to the visuals this movie produces, watching this spectacle alone was enough to make me feel satisfied to even watch it in the first place.
The Music was composed by Henry Jackman, known for creating soundtracks for other Disney hits such as Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6. While far from memorable, he makes a fun and intoxicating score that is still very fun and overally adventurous. The music becomes much louder and more expressive when the audience enters the strange world, and the epic music surrounding the story fits in snuggly with the tone and style of the whole movie. There is also a song called “They’re the Clades,” which wasn’t necessarily needed for this film. Still, hearing the tune on its own makes me feel like going on an adventure, so I guess it did its job well. Like the animation, the music is quite ambitious. While it doesn’t save the whole movie, it does at least leave a decent impression.
This is a movie I want to love. The creative animation, fun music score, and adventurous spirit keep this movie from being mediocre. Unfortunately, the unoriginal, awkwardly paced storytelling and generic and underdeveloped characters made the movie feel redundant. It's a shame because I can tell the animators at Disney had a lot of fun making a colorful and creative world filled with creatures unlike anything seen in a Disney film beforehand. However, if the storytelling of generational trauma had been executed a lot better, it would have been a film I would have absolutely admired. I can see this film getting a cult following, but this is a case where the visuals are ambitious. Still, the narrative sadly can’t quite match the ambition similarly.
(Final Grade: C+)