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Strange World Movie Review

Strange World is a 2022 animated science fiction adventure film directed by Don Hall. It is Disney’s 61^st feature film and one of their weaker efforts.

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“Those mountains aren’t my legacy. You are“

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The Clades are a legendary family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest and most crucial mission into uncharted and treacherous territory. Strange World will undoubtedly go down in history as one of Disney’s biggest box office bombs. It is a film that received so much controversy over its inclusion of a gay teenage character, but when all is said and done, this controversy was frustrating to witness from both sides.

The homophobes clearly went after the movie, bombing it with one-star reviews, but Disney themselves should be blamed for going through all of this unnecessary hassle when in reality this character and that storyline was not only secondary, but totally pointless and unnecessary to the overall story at hand. This movie is notoriously lacking in any meaningful and/or intense conflict, and the worst example of that is the lack of any family issues regarding the son’s sexuality. That was a missed opportunity and it just felt not only unrealistic to entirely omit that, but again it rendered this inclusion useless.

Ethan himself is likable and the rift between him and his father regarding his future profession produced some moving sequences, but for the most part the film rushed through these minor conflicts, resulting in a film that is devoid of suspense and meaning. Searcher is by far the most likable and memorable character of the bunch and Jake Gyllenhaal’s voice acting was wonderful here.

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The strained relationship between him and his father was well explored and Jaeger is another highlight as this larger-than-life explorer. The father-son relationships were reminiscent of similar dynamics in ‘Avatar 2’ and they were the emotional crux of a film that otherwise failed to properly move me. The female characters are much less interesting here. Meridian is cool but hardly memorable while Callisto is also underdeveloped.

There is a joke to be made about this film’s wokeness and it’s an obvious one. After all, this is a movie about an interracial family with a gay son and a disabled dog. They even had to include a dog with three legs and it was simply unnecessary to the story. This is representation for the sake of representation and hopefully Disney moves back from it after the financial failure of this project that had all the makings of an old-fashioned adventure yarn, but it clashed hard with those overly modern elements.

The dog is still adorable, but the comic relief and goofy sidekick highlight is obviously Splat in this instance. This blue creature is entirely unique within the Disney sidekick pantheon as his design is authentically alien and strange while still retaining the goofiness and childlike innocence that are the staples of these characters. He was wonderful and I wished for more of those comedic touches in this overly serious film.

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Strange World is all about environmentalism, sometimes to its detriment. A couple of lines of dialogue were cringe-worthy in their woke ideology regarding climate change, but the twist in the third act elevated the plot for me significantly and it made it much more original than it otherwise could have been. That reveal about the movie’s setting worked because it also made sense given the pinkish and reddish environment of the titular strange world and it was just very cool that they managed to surprise even me with that reveal.

Strange World is at its best in its adventurous elements and in its world building, both being phenomenal. This world of extremely bright colors, strange otherworldly flora and fauna and impressively detailed scenery was a joy to behold. Some of the imagery here was breathtaking in its sheer imagination. The sense of wonder and sheer excitement was palpable in certain scenarios, though the movie could have gone even bigger in terms of spectacle.

The animation is incredible. This is the type of colorful and richly detailed CGI that I personally adore. But the highlights were those hand-drawn sequences that in their style emulated the comics of yesteryear, especially the pulpy adventure serials. ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ was clearly the biggest influence on this film in terms of style and plot. The score could have been more memorable, but the sound is great and the movie truly is an audio-visual delight. I just wish that the dialogue was more sophisticated and that the pacing was less frenetic.

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